... of chalkboard goodies and geese?

In case you have the Animaniacs Vol 1 DVD handy, and you watch the episode entitled Cookies for Einstein... keep an eye out for some funny stuff on the chalkboard:H2O = WET
STP = OIL
[I only just noticed that yesterday when I rewatching that particular disc for like the 3rd time, I feel so ashamed, LoL!]

[There was also P=BM3 .. I wonder if it's got something to do with urination and bowel movements?]

And, of course, I do hope you've noticed that in the Pinky & The Brain intro, Brain scribbles THX = 1138 on the lab chalkboard? Would be funnier if it were George Lucas and not Steve Spielberg involved in this zany cartoon series, but what the hey.

= = = = on another note = = = = [ b flat? ] = = = =

Found this courtesy of Roberta:

Geb Engaging personality, sensitive, modest, occasionally narcissistic, but can rise above vanity. Colors: male: violet, female: rose Compatible Signs:Set, Horus Dates: Feb 12 - Feb 29, Aug 20 - Aug 31 Role: God of the earth Appearance: Green-skinned man, with leaves all over his body and a goose on his head. Sometimes he was shown laying on his side under his wife, the sky goddess Nut. Sacred animals: goose What is Your Egyptian Zodiac Sign? Designed by CyberWarlock of Warlock's Quizzles and Quandaries

... so don't be surprised if I goose ya next time I see ya, LoL!


= = = = = and now for something completely different? = = = = =

Wow has the weather turned! We had an unseasonably mild Thanksgiving week last week with temps in the 60's F ... and now we're going to be lucky to see anything as "warm" as 37F within the next 7 days! Yesterday it rained all day, and tonight we're expecting a major storm system that's gonna be throwing loads of snow our way. Wheee! I suppose it's high time to get real winter weather, eh?

Cheers, from the soon-to-be VERY Windy City!

no more grandparents for me!

So, my last surviving grandparent is no more.

She passed away peacefully in her sleep last night.

Didn't find out till an hour ago that she'd contracted pneumonia a few weeks ago and had been deteriorating rapidly since then: water in lungs, full of medication, all that jazz. Not fun.

I'm glad she's finally gone.

Some "portraits" of her can be found here and a little snippet here.

The last I saw her was during my short 2-week hop to Switzerland in October 2005;
the last time we spoke was a brief phone call placed when I arrived in the U.S. in July 2006;
the last written communication was the wedding announcement we sent in late September 2006;

The memory of her that I will keep with me is of a particular tradition / interaction we'd have when I was very young: 6 years old or thereabouts. During that time, we went to visit in Switzerland almost yearly, and always during wintertime, because that was when we'd have the long break between school years in Malaysia [unlike the long summer break in the western world]. So the weather would be quite cold, and my grandmother was worried we'd catch cold, what with us not being used to the whole winter concept and bundling up properly against the cold and all....

Her solution - Vicks VapoRub to warm the chest & lungs!

I looked forward to those "fricsionner" [sp?] sessions, where almost every evening before us kids went to sleep, she'd slather the stuff onto my chest and rub it in,,, then I'd turn over and get the same on my back. MmmmMmMmMMMMmmm! Good touches, given in abundance, contributing to a sense of being loved, of security, of simple happiness. Good times. Simpler times. Happy times.

But, like I said before: I'm glad she's finally gone. I hope she is now at peace, pain-free, perhaps even reunited with grand-papa who went beyond the veil almost 10 years ago.

Adieu, grand-maman.
J'espère que ta place préparé vers ton Seigneur Jésus est tout que tu a espéré qu'elle serait.

[more reflections on death later]

great Quotes & Catch Phrases?

So, it seems TV Land has compiled a list of 100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catch Phrases which it will reveal over 5 days beginning December 10th. Of course, the list is already available for our perusal. Go fig.

Anyways.

First, I gotta say that at least "they" are not myopically calling it the World's Greatest etc etc etc... and precisely because this reflects USA pop culture there are many on that list I totally do not know, or do not relate to. In fact, some that I do know are recent additions since getting to know Kosh - he and his deep well of tv "knowledge", LoL! Have I mentioned that if you're playing Trivial Pursuit or Scene It, you want him on your team??

Aaaanyways... here are some noteworthy ones from this so-called 100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catch Phrases, to me:

• "Don't make me angry ..." (David Banner, "The Incredible Hulk")
  Heh, it goes on "You won't like me when I'm angry" ... I totally enjoyed that show when younger, although I bet it's sooooo dated I probably couldn't sit through one episode if it was on air right now. I'd forgotten all about the haunting music at the end [when David? Bruce? Banner is walking along the highway, trying to hitch a ride] until it was "reproduced" by Stewie in Family Guy. It sent shivers up my spine!


• "Oh, my God! They killed Kenny!" (Stan and Kyle, "South Park")
  LoL, I feel a weird sense of pride for Matt&Trey for this to be in the list! Yes, that's despite that Jared episode I caught last night that had an utterly disturbing liposuction scene that actually had me turning away from the screen. And it's a cartoon. Yup, it was that sick. Gotta admire their twisted genius :-)


• "Whassup?" (Budweiser ad)
  Ah, the power of the internet. When I left the U.S. in 1995, Budweiser was just using the frogs in their ads. I heard about, and got to watch, the whassup ads thanks to vids posted online. And all those spoofs! There's one Jewish one with everyone saying "Shalommmmmm!" that is as irritating and as funny as the original Bud ads. What a hoot!

When I started this post, I was going to point out other great catch phrases of mine that I supposed hadn't made the cut,,, when I realised TV Land's list was based on TV, duh! So here are a few other noteworthy quotes and catch phrases, not limited to TV:

MOVIES:
Rain Man : definitely, definitely, yeah...
LOTR: myyyy preciousssssssssssssssssss
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: he chose [pause] poorly


BOOKS:
From "A Stranger in a Strange Land" : thou art God and groc


TV - CARTOONS
From Family Guy's Chris Griffin: I'm turning you into poo!
From Family Guy's Stewie Griffin: Victory is mine! and, my absolute fave uttered by him: click click bloody click pancakes!

TV - BABYLON 5
Delenn: abso-fraggin-lutely, damn it

Plenty more, but my brain isn't cooperating.

What are *your* fave quotes / catch phrases from TV/movie/ads?

cutting down on laundry time?

Found this handy "how to fold a t-shirt in ~3 seconds" video sometime last week.



Pretty nifty, eh?

So, I played it a few times: studied it, if you will; and was confident I'd be able to reproduce it when I was next in the laundry room with all those dried clothes a-beggin for some foldage.

But.

When that time came... I just couldn't remember the "trick". So I had to still fold the t-shirts the "long" way. Bleh.

Reminder #1: you can't just watch something being done and assume you can do it - you need to try it out yourself!

So, on the *next* laundry day? You'll find me practicing with one t-shirt in front of the 'puter before heading down to tackle the many tee's that will be a-waitin for my attention in the dryer.

In the meantime - if this trick helps *you* out with *your* foldage duties - you're welcome! :-)

Cheers!

it's that time of year when ...

... having big thighs is a good thing;

... of course that actually refers to the poor dead turkeys [turkies?], but what the hey :p


Yup, I've been quiet - [no worries, Monsoon, I'm fine!] - it's just that Kosh actually has this whole week off, so my time on the puter is both limited and not as high a priority. Things'll get back to normal next week :-)

Oh, and guess what else happens next week?

Hint: it's wicked and green! :-)

Cheers!

it's written in the stars

Well, more like written in that email from astrology.com: "Mercury turns direct in Scorpio on November 17, it's time to incorporate everything you've learned during this Mercury retrograde period, which began October 28. Hopefully, you’ve done your research and are ready to forge ahead. Independent Uranus turns direct on November 19, bringing change and a desire to be totally true to yourself. Just what is that magical mixture that makes you unique? As you are contemplating that, Jupiter enters philosophical and travel-oriented Sagittarius on November 23 for the first time in 12 years. A new course must be mapped out -- are you ready?"

Heh. There you have it. Mighty active astrological activity around us,, have *you* felt anything? [ /end rolling eyes]

Anyways.

Thought I'd share with you a well-written post, by one of my admired bloggers, on Borat and how it holds a mirror up to the USA. Still doesn't change anything for me: I'm certainly looking forward to seeing it - on DVD.

Speaking about DVDs... so with the Netflix and all,,, Kosh surprised me not just by insisting on getting Date Movie, but on pushing it up to the top of the queue. I mean, I *was* interested when I first heard about it, but as soon as I saw trailers for it, I knew it wasn't going to be worth a watch, even tho it stars my dear Willow. For some reason, Kosh had the impression it was really good [then again, he keeps saying Scary Movie 3 was great, while I felt the higher the Scary Movie number the worse the movie..] ... anyways, so the DVD arrived yesterday, and today we watched it. All I can say is don't do it to yourself, don't watch this movie, it's so not worth the time! I let out only two real laughs throughout. Now to see if I can get away with "accidentally" deleting Scary Movie 4 from the queue.... ;-)

And about Stephen King's Cell: while it was great to have a nice tale of King "horror" to sink my teeth into, the tale itself was just too much like The Stand, and nowhere near as satisfying. Don't buy it, borrow it from your library! [a proper review will hopefully be submitted to FWDT soon]. Now to take on Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five :-) no new DVD arrivlas till at least Monday, bummer!

Cheers!

Ups & Downs in mid-November

Down:
There are majorly strong winds a-blowin' out there; the Windy City is certainly living up to its name today. According to the weatherman, today is the cloudiest it's been in Chicagoland since 1992. Bleah.

Up:
So we signed up for a free trial of Netflix [2 weeks 3-at-a-time unlimited], to be followed by redemption of a 2month 1-at-a-time unlimited gift subscription.

And so I am finally on my way to completing my Buffy education [had only seen up to Season 5]. Devoured the first two discs of Season 6 in one day, whoohooo! Had so much more appreciation for both "Once again, with feeling" and "Tablua Rasa" episodes that Kosh had had me watch when all I knew was perhaps Seasons 1 or 2. Freak that I am, I would now love to get my hands [and ears] on the songs from the musical, and have added this to my wish list, LOL!

btw - other tv shows on the netflix list: Veronica Mars [caught one of the latest episodes a few weeks ago and was intrigued, so figured I'd start at the beginning...] and Battlestar Galactica [the "reimagined" version from the Sci-Fi Channel - wasn't impressed with the pseudo-pilot shown on NBC last year, but I've been hearing so many nice things about it from fellow bloggers who seem to have wavelengths comparable to mine,,, so... will try lah..].

Down:
The DVD player decided to crap out on us right when the DVDs arrived. At first I thought it wasn't regocnizing the disc because it was really really scratched, so I played it on the laptop instead. Then tried the second disc [looking much newer], which also was deemed "bad" by the player. Fine. Played that on the laptop too.

By that time, Kosh and I began to suspect it was the player. Tried our Bab5 DVDs that had worked fine a few days earlier : "bad disc".

Grrrr!

The "up" within this "down" is that Toshiba will replace the unit [surprisingly, considering the warranty is just a lame 3 month thing!] *and* will be sending us a shipping label thingy so that postage is on them too! But we won't celebrate teill we get that shipping label; send off the player *and* get the replacement! Might take a while....

... in the meantime, we are going to have to make do with laptop viewing, tho Kosh has already hooked up the "spare" laptop to our "system" so that we can at least view the next movies on a slightly larger screen :-)

more downs: the IQ vs lbs effort isn't yielding results at the moment. Sure, I delayed starting properly, then sabotaged myself food-wise all too often, *and* while I was good about the water drinking at first, I'm now barely doing 600mL a day; the only thing I'm doing relatively right is the exercise... but all by itself all it's going to do is help maintain where I am, not improve... *sigh*

Anyways, on a slightly related note: was surfing the net and got engrossed [and I do mean gross] reading the testimonials about this product. It's real easy to get sucked in. I'm now considering.... but will bounce the idea off of Dr Kosh first :-p This would make for some *awesome* photos, eh? LMAO!

Anyways - today I'm feeling lazy so probably no gym today.

Will probably finally finish reading Stephen King's Cell; all I can say right now is "omg Mr King how I have missed you! Yes, I loved the DT series, but,,, it's nice to sink mu teeth into a good "horror" tale that you are just excellent at producing!".

Cheers!