Yes, I know, I'm not reading LJ....

or just about anything else. I get trapped by the computer (shiny!) and lose hours, so I avoid it. Medication stinks (you may substitute a synonym, but let's keep this PG, please!) So if I need to know something important, send me email--I'll check it out.

In the meantime--I can't actually watch this, of course, my computer is a Luddite and refuses QuickTime, or to use MSP or RealTime as designed--but the description of it sounds like how my brain feels right now. So enjoy--finals week at a big university. Gotta love it! It makes my dinosaur screams at midnight seem very small school. Of course, I went to a small school...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~austincb/pacman/pacamajig.mov

Two students at the University of Michigan, dressed up as Pac-Man and the Ghost respectively, ran through the UGLi (the Undergraduate Library) and the Fishbowl (a huge computer lab on Central campus) during finals week. Pac-Man screams in horror as the Ghost chases him yelling "Waka Waka Waka." This video has spread like wildfire on campus, and killed the original hosting site's bandwidth.

The still photo is at http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/21/pac_man_reenacted_by.html

Back to cook some spiced nuts...

Grace notes for the Solstice

I bopped over the the friend's page to see if my post went through (See, I really don't trust the computer--the keyboard is wonking out, too) but spotted this old Finnish ceremony revived by folks in north Minnesota:
ice candles

Thanks, pegkerr, who also shares a lot of my favorite movies!

This is also the time of year for grave blankets. I discovered them in some research years ago--small communities in northern Michigan made them for family graves, and I assume took them down once they deteriorated--but now apparently they've become big business.

I started the laundry. Really, I did...

Read This--Please

If you read no other commentary in 2005 on how the government is currently working, read this editorial. It does not matter if you are liberal or conservative, republican, democrat, libertarian, greenie--you must read this.

Let's put it this way: picture your worst nightmare as president. Dick Cheney? Hillary Rodham Clinton? Ann Coulter? Michael Moore?

Then understand that Bush thinks he has these powers as president.

This is indefinite dictatorial power. And I don't use that term lightly; the very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a ruler above the law. In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship. Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5793639.html