New Title

As I'm working thru some hard homework stuff, I thought I'd remind myself of why I'm actually doing a PhD. It's so that I can make my future students address me using an awesome honorific. I've tweaked mine again, and I think I'm liking this new version of my future title:
A Gloriosa Doutora Vanessa das Belas Artes e Supernas Letras
aka
Glorious Doctor Vanessa of the Beautiful Arts and Supernal Letters

I'm now feeling better about keepin' on keepin' on.
To megalomania and beyond!!!!!

captcha

This was my captcha from a few moments back. It means "ice" in Spanish. It's also how my Grandpa Swenson used to answer the phone.

How to end a conversation

This is how it works on the facebooks:

You post something to your status.
A friend comments.
You comment back.
Banter ensues, back and forth, back and forth.
Then, friend merely "likes" your last comment.
Conversation has finished.

Music Dream

Well, it wasn't really a musical dream, I guess. But I had this dream a couple of nights ago where someone was talking about music. I had to leave once they finished their story. As I was walking out the door I turned to them and said, "I'll be Bach."

I really did that in my dream.
A friend said that my dream self is funnier that my waking-hours self.

Latin

 I was double checking something tonight on Google Translate, which is a fun website, btw, and I got the following translation. I underlined the supposed corresponding words:

Seriously, Elísabeth meant cousin in Latin? And how would Google know it was a girl that I was meaning?

Dubious, dubious.
Good thing I didn't really need to tell a cousin happy birthday in Latin, because I probably would've gotten laughed at. Probably for two reasons now, come to think of it.
That is all.

My subconscious must

be trying to tell me something because today I woke up with the song "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon playing in my mind.

Last like this for a bit

Promise.

Here's the thing, people rail about redistribution of wealth and how it's whatever negative adjective they wanna use. The thing that kills me, absolutely slays me, is that tax policies are always going to sway wealth in one direction, this or that. The way the tax policies have been for a while has made it so that the middle class bears a heavier burden and the wealthy get wealthier.

People listen to this or that by an idiot like Rush Limbaugh and they think that the GOP is somehow trying to make it fair. They're not saving us from socialism. But only lucky for them, tons of people in the US have no idea what socialism is, so it works out great.

My mom has a heavier tax burden than most people b/c financially she's getting screwed by the tax codes. And by my mom, I mean your mom, and then your friend's mom, right on down the line. And that's not even talking about food, medical expenses and normal life and the taxes that are associated with that. When you add every tax together that you pay, including on food and clothes and gas, who do you think pays more of a percentage of income, Trump or you? You do. It's not even close.

So if you wanna know real truth, if you wanna know what's really up, if you wanna see what the tax code has really done to people, look here and then look here.

I'm not some crazy lefty liberal here. In this regard I'm very, very centrist. People just need to know the truth. You wonder where the middle class went? Now you know. Occupy Wall Street, don't dress in 18th century attire and spout false histories of our founding fathers.

And I promise now that I'll go back to my regularly scheduled blog posts about sports that no one but me cares about.

don't-get-itness

One of my favorite things right now are the posts "no religious test" line from the Constitution b/c that jerk doubted Romney's Christianity. But my favoritest part is how a chunk of these people have also posted things doubting Barack Obama's Christianity and calling him a closet Muslim (as though being Muslim were a bad thing).

The "don't-get-itness" is quite a thing to behold.

Coping Mechanisms

Lately my heart's been hurting a whole lot. I don't admit things like this often, but after Chris' mom passed away, my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer two weekends ago, and then Brian's brother being killed in a small plane crash on Tues night in West Jordan, I'm just done seeing the people I care so much about hurt so much. Like, I'm really done. No one can hurt anymore.

This next part is going to sound so weird to most of the world. I couldn't sleep last night, like at all. I'd spent about 18 hours trying to figure out how to calm my soul down a bit. I went to what I learned from my father: I put something on to watch that I love (Passing Strange) and I got out the ironing board and ironed tons of clothes. It wasn't Blazing Saddles, like my dad woulda watched, but it was a musical, so it's close enough.

Who knows why I'm posting this. But there it is.

Pottermore

Because I'm in huge need of banality right now, something that will take my mind off of life, I've decided to post some not-letting-the-cat-out-of-the-bag screen caps of Pottermore. I got in as a beta tester, which was very exciting. So I've been in Pottermore for about 10 days.
This is what it is:

Then a wand chose me. I was absolutely most excited about this part. I'm going to try and find one similar when I go to HPLand in June:

 Then I got sorted into a House. I was least surprised about this, since I'm an intellectual snob.

There are other cool thing about Pottermore, like wandwork practice for spells and charms, or the part where you get to brew potions, things like that. The background information that we never knew about regarding different characters is really fun to read. You find that as you journey through the chapters in the story. Book 2 is set to be released in a few months and Pottermore is up for everyone to enter in around the end of Oct, I think. I'm FelicisLumos85, so you should add me if you're nerdy awesome enough to be on the site.

Life is kinda funny

The B-52s got stuck in my head today and I had this realization. At the beginning of the song they sing about the Atlanta Highway. I've sung along with that lyric for quite literally 20 years. I now live .5 miles from the Atlanta Highway. Life's kind of a goofy thing how it all plays out.

At :18 in the song:

MoTab's Ron Paul Impersonator's Impersonator

On SNL there's this guy that they have impersonate Ron Paul:

Ronish Paul

 And there's this guy in MoTab that looks like the Ron Paul impersonator:

Ronishish Paul

 

 

And it made me laugh every time I saw him.