Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I just finished reading Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I really, really enjoyed them both. I love conspiracy theories to begin with, and I like stories that have things lurking under the surface. I also enjoy puzzle solving. Both books are definitely not written for the lowest common denominator.

In this vein I also recommend House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (which I’m currently re-reading) and its companion book, The Whalestoe Letters. Also the movie Donnie Darko. Dark, puzzling, and requiring of a lot of thought.

Other movies along the same vein – Jacob’s Ladder, Brazil, Closetland.

Anyone have recommendations for me based on this list?

The past few days have been consumed with cleaning up the hacks left on the linux box, setting up a new linux box, and going to Houston. The Metallica concert was pretty good. I’ve never seen so many women flashing their boobs in my life. It was fun watching hub turn into a rock-and-roll-symbol-making, head-banging metalhead though. And say what you will about their Napstericity, that was the first concert I went to where the band stayed onstage for ten minutes after the last song to toss guitar picks and drumsticks into the crowd. I am a little concerned about Kirk Hammett, who was wearing a tank top with damn near spaghetti straps and appeared to have waxed his eyebrows recently. The new bass player cavorted around the stage like a little toad. He was exceedingly bizarre. Lars is, of course, a strange little monkey-man who made strange little faces during the whole concert. James Hetfield was actually the most normal looking one of the bunch and spent a lot of time engaging the audience (albeit with the cheesy applause getter “It’s good to be in Houston! Hey Houston! Sing it, Houston!”. Anyway, he has a cute smile and seemed really energetic and it was fun hearing him growl in person.

Back to the old linux box!

My sister in law invited me to go to Canyon Ranch Spa in Tucson this October. It sounded like a great deal, but unfortunately they’re getting back the day before we’re leaving for Gunstock 2003, so I had to decline. Maybe I will be at goal, or close to it, when they go next year and that can be my reward for myself. For my 25 pound mark I bought a cookbook, but reading it I realized that the recipes wouldn’t work, so I bought some different ones.

Metallica concert this weekend – I gave hub the tickets for his birthday in May. I’m more of an 80s music girl myself, but the playlist for their recent concerts looks pretty good. Wonder if I can get a Napster shirt by this weekend.

Update – too late, but I sure would have liked to wear this shirt for the concert.

A brief flurry of comments and emails about MUDding made me decide I should come clean as to how this blog even started.

Back in 1994 was when I got net access for the first time. I think it was also around that time that I got my first CDROM drive and 14.4 modem. How times have changed. Anyway, there wasn’t really a web to speak of at that time. Main protocols were email, telnet, usenet, and gopher. Having cut my teeth on the Infocom games such as Zork, and being a devotee of Moria, I got excited when I found that there were online RPGs, also known as MUDs (Multi User Dimensions). I found a list of them somewhere and tried a few, then noticed that one was being hosted at UT, where I was sporadically attending school. It was called StrangeMUD.

So I logged on and created a character and the local Austin people (notably Questor saw that I was logging in locally and started chatting with me. A couple of weeks later I hit a death trap by typing “ea” for “eat”, which the parser took to mean “east” instead and I went off a cliff. I bitched loudly and heartily and Questor outfitted me with a set of equipment that was slightly better than the newbie stuff I had, but to my eyes it looked like pure gold and I told him I wanted to buy him a pack of smokes in thanks. He and Aeia used to hang out at one of the UT computer labs and he said to come on over anytime, and I did, and started hanging out there with a motley crew of characters and having a jolly old time. School? What school?

One day, Caila came for a visit and said she wanted to eat at Popeye’s, the closest one being east of the highway in what was considered a Very Bad Neighborhood Indeed, but we went anyway and I grew an extra pair of eyes to see who was sneaking up behind me. Caila and I got to be very friendly too, and she ended up moving to Austin, and we would have endless Spades and Hearts marathons with Questor and Wiilf and hang out constantly and have a lot of fun. School? What school?

The next spring, another person from the mud hosted a party in Houston and Caila convinced me to go, since she had met the hostess and said she was a hoot. We went, and had a fabulous time, and I met quite a few other mudders, including DrTongue (a.k.a. “Hub”).

Years later Caila told me she was starting a blog and I said that’s it, I will too since all the damned cool kids have them.

So you see, if it were not for StrangeMUD (and Caila!) I would not have this blog today. You may either thank the mud or curse it. It still exists, after having been through some plot twists that would put the soap opera “Passions” to shame. You should check it out sometime.

The other day I made some Crystal Light. Hub walked up and saw the pitcher and asked what it was. And noted there was a dog hair floating in it. Oh, that’s because it’s my hairbal tea, I said. BaHA! BaHAhaha!

I’ve been getting migraines since I was a teenager. Normally I can just zap them with Midrin. Lately, though, I’ve been getting them once a week or more, and the Midrin isn’t helping. I have no idea what’s causing them – lack of sleep? dieting? I’m sure grinding my teeth plays a large part but I do it while I’m awake, and one of those night-time appliances isn’t feasible to use while awake. When I went to my dentist for the first time, he did a double-take at the volume of my jaw popping when I opened my mouth. He said it’s a bad case of TMJ. I guess there’s surgery available for it, but after the horrible surgery experiences I’ve had I don’t want to chance it. This is also why I wouldn’t dream of doing Lasik, although hub’s really intrigued by it.

I’ve read that Botox prevents migraines. The doc told me to try amitryptaline (or something like that) which basically turns me into a raging bitchzombie. Imitrex doesn’t work. Any other migraine people have suggestions? Last week I got migraines for 3 nights straight – the last one so awful that I was gagging and moaning all night, and my right eye was watering uncontrollably. Not a pretty sight.

Argh, I can feel myself clenching my jaw but can’t seem to stop doing it! Maybe I should try bio-feedback.

Tivo has decided that we would like to see a movie called Empire of the Ants, a 1977 flick starring Joan Collins. TiVo describes it as “A Florida real-estate woman takes buyers to an island where ants have been swilling radioactive waste”. Sounds like a shoo-in for Rhonda Whatsherface’s UP All Night. Whatever happened to that, anyway?

The down side is that I forgot to tell TiVo not to record over The Manchurian Candidate, and I never taped it.

Silly TiVo.

I went to the Austin Blog Meetup tonight, for the second time. I keep meaning to go but life always seems to get in the way. I enjoyed the people and hated the space – our choices were: 1) get rained on, 2) listen to really loud music, or 3) listen to horrible poetry accompanied by spastic guitar playing. 4) was leave the coffeehouse entirely and hang out in the covered breezeway in front of Clear Channel Communications. No chairs, just cement. In any event, it was fun to go, although the group is considering dumping Meetup entirely and doing its own thing. The venues they suggest are just miserable. For heaven’s sake, the coffeehouse starting charging cover and nobody could even go in to use the bathroom. Not cool. I’d offer up my house if my living room could comfortably seat more than 4 people. Well, and there’s the rugrat factor too.