The Topic of Great Randomness

[Kathy Li]

What is this snow of which you speak?

Z--yeah, it's going to be something of a temperature shock for me. I'm packing longjohns. Still, it can't be as bad as the year I went to Minneapolis in October, and the temperature difference was 90°F and ash (fires) to 30°F and snow. Still. Convention!!! I'm going to Fiddler's Green.

Ugh. Christmas shopping. Arrrrgh...

Speaking of Northern Lights, I picked up a bunch of books at the National Theatre's bookstall about the stage version of His Dark Materials.

Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel and Patricia Hodge as Mrs. Coulter. How perfect is that casting?

[EWizard11]

Ella: Just because you think that Bush made a mistake and you want him to admit it, doesn't mean that he thinks that he made a mistake. Your opinion on this matter, is just that, your opinion. I don't think that Bush has made a mistake in regards to the war in Iraq. Loosing less than 2000 lives in a war is very good in comparison to all the other wars that other presidents have fought. What about Vietnam and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost? Nothing good really ever happened there. At least in Iraq, the people are free. And sometimes, people have to give their lives for the good of others.

I'm sorry, but I've heard that bit before and it just makes me feel worse. Over 1000 lives have been lost and--this may not be you and I apologize, but this is how it strikes me--and people try to downplay it by saying it's been worse in the past. People are still being killed in those wars, and it's still awful if one mother, if one father, wife, husband, sister, child is mourning. It's also an opinion that the people in Iraq are better off now than they were. Everyday life for them is a lot different, according to an Iraqi girl's post on the UNICEF children's boards. She can't go out of her house without an escort--just for protection. She's afraid she'll be kidnapped or shot. I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein was a good thing. His regime was terrible. I am saying that this could have been better if we'd had a better plan, more troops on the ground, and a less reckless leader. Again, these are only my opinions, and I don't want to fight with anyone! We can have a disagreement while staying friends.

[Kathy Li]

Y'know, what chills me not a little is that the only number the media (and most folks) toss about is the American casualty count. As if those are the only lives lost that are worth counting or mentioning. Minimum estimates have Iraqi fatalities at around 10,000 so far.

And, btw, from 1961-1965 (the first four years of the Vietnam War), the US deaths were also under 2,000 (1,864).

BTW, one more number to throw at you. 2004 voter turn out (preliminary counts) in the US was 56.8% of those eligible. Amazingly high, compared to past years. But it does mean that more people didn't vote at all than voted for either Kerry or Bush, and that less than a third of the US voted Bush in. Don't think your vote doesn't matter, and don't ever give up the chance to vote when you can.

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by Aurora:
It snowed today! It SNOWED!

. . . That is oddly pathetic but great. KNow what snow means?

That you're in Canada ?

(hides very quickly)

[Chani]

Sorry to have to say this, but there isn't a Fued between me and Diego... (at least not on my side).. there is only great disappointment. And over time one gets over that. And I will get over that.

[alla]

Snow? ... i agree with kli6... what is this snow of which you speak?

hehe... we had wannabe 'snow' today in the form of a hailstorm ... ohwell... better get back to the grindstone...

I have one day of lessons left and seven bells

[meteorite]

Alooooooo-ha, all! It's been a while, but I have been very very busy with class. At graduate level, they expect an amazing amount of work for 3 credit hours.

<span class="ev_code_RED">Warning: long winded story coming up.</span>
A somewhat scary thing happened to me last weekend, over Halloween. For each class I take, I am expected to fly to another island (Oahu, where the main University of Hawaii campus is) and participate in an "intensive": spend Saturday and most of Sunday in class for usually at least 8 hours. This class intensive happened to fall on Halloween weekend. I planned to fly over Saturday morning, and return late Sunday afternoon, just in time for a big Halloween party. Well, it started to rain just after I got to my class, and rained all afternoon into the evening. My classmates and I didn't think too much of it, until around 7 that night, when the fire sirens went off. We collected up our things and trooped outside into the rain, until our professor could confirm that it was just a short, and there was no fire. We went back inside, and had just resettled when the lights went out and the alarms went off again. Several of us had flashlights, and we turned them on and were discussing how long we should wait for power to be restored, when someone noticed the water coming in. As we were in a basement classroom, we just thought a puddle had overwhelmed one of the doors, until the next wave came in, and it was knee-deep. Someone made a run for the exit, but it was blocked by chairs and computer equipment that had washed in from other classes. Meanwhile, the water was rapidly getting deeper. Our professor was trying to jimmy open a window, but a student decided to take more drastic action and broke out another window with a chair. We all climbed out the broken window into the rain, and discovered that the stream which flowed through campus had become blocked upstream. When the stream finally overflowed and broke out, it created a flash flood. I looked back, and water was cascading out of the window we had exited. There were waterfalls in places that weren't supposed to have waterfalls, and one road had become a river. There were cars in trees and floating down the main road. We all fled campus, which was quickly becoming a disaster area. I camped out overnight at a classmate's house (second floor!) and flew back to Maui the next morning, on the first flight I could get.

The basement of the library where the archives were and the Library and Information Sciences (my graduate program) offices are is destroyed. It will take at least a couple months to clean up, and many of the maps and documents stored there are a total loss. Most of the professors who had offices in the basement lost all their work, unless they had stored it off campus. The flood waters made a swathe of ruin through basements all through campus. If you do a Google search for "University of Hawaii" "Halloween" and "flood", you will probably see some news articles and pictures of the devastation. I think classes will continue, but don't know how much was lost or how the damage will be worked around.
[/rant]

[alla]

ok... this is what happens when i get bored when i am supposed to be studying.

TW: (enters singing) Everybody bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, everybody bouncing just like me!
DG: No!!! no more tumbleweeds bouncing on me... I'm dead enough as it is.
TW: what?
DG + GN: NO MORE BOUNCING IT HURTS US!
TW: oh... (singing) Everybody rolling rolling rolling, Evrybody rolling, just like me!
(rolls out)
DG: thank the Powers. I didn't think it would be that easy to get rid of him.

CHANTING IN THE BACKGROUND

GN: What's that?

CHANTING INCREASES IN VOLUME

DG: I don't know... It almost sounds like... (the rest of its sentence is muffled by a mini tumbleweed stampeed)

SILIENCE

DG: is it safe?
GN:(whispers) I think so

CHANTING STARTS AGAIN

DG: oh no. Can you make out what they are saying?
GN: No.

CHANTING INCREASES IN VOLUME
Tumble
Tumble Tumble,
Oh, Tumbleweed of Doom!
Dried up rolling bushes,
Bringing forth your doom! (repeats, getting louder each time)

DG: Tumbleweed of Doom? You mean they do worse than bounce? Uh-oh!

TWoD appears!!!

Enjoy!

Alla

[wildflower]

No! Not the tumbleweed of doom! See what you've done, Tel? Themesongs are BAD! *Runs away screaming from tumbleweeds* *Doesn't understand what they're about in the first place, runs anyway*

Haha. I really should be doing my Latin homework. I have my class in what, 3 hours? Oops. I'll blame it on the tumbleweeds. And I suppose breakfast would be good too. *Leaves to get something to eat* *Returns with mutant tumbleweed found in fridge* Getitoff! Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff!!
*help*

[alla]

ohohoh... there's mutant tumbleweeds now? heh heh heh heh...

Wildflower's Latin Class:

Teacher: Why haven't you done your homework?
Wildflower: It was the tumbleweeds miss, I was attacked by them.
Teacher: Tumbleweeds?
WF: yes tumbleweeds. I was going to do my homework when i was buried under a mini tumbleweed stampeed!
Teacher: (thinking aloud) Well now I've heard them all...

I have one day of school left ... ... kinda. today's my last lesson day. Its sorta sad but happy at the same time. .

Peaches are fuzzy! and wildflower i am going to give you an award for that last bit of your post...

*Presents Wildflower with the Quidam award... for posting the most random thing that i have ever seen...*

[wildflower]

*Accepts award* Actually it's my siggy. But yes, it's random. Fuzzy!
For anyone who remembers Mr.Buggles and Fuzzbuzz, and were thankful Fuzzbuzz wasn't named Mr.Fuzzles, I call my fuzzy dog fuzzles all the time. It's stuck, too, so now the whole family does.

Whee!It turns out I don't have Latin after all. It's the day I have no class! It's funny, we almost went anyway, but noticed on the calender that it's break. . .Happy!
Oh yeah, I can just picture THAT as an excuse.
"I didn't forget to do my homework this time! No, I stll don't have it, but at least it's not my fault! It was the tumbleweed of doom! No! Really!"

I read all of the TOGR!! All the pages!! Whee. . .Now I have nothing to do! Oh well. I'll just have to read every topic on the discussion forums.

[Gryphon]

Clack clack clack clack... Uncut claws on mirros.

Oh dog. *blinks* Dog. God. There.

...

*shrugs*

Anyway, oh god. I stopped breathing for a few seconds reading Meteorite's post. Now I'm grinning ear to ear. That's cool!

Wow, I'm glad you're alright.

Alla
ok... this is what happens when i get bored when i am supposed to be studying.

Neat, same. ^^

DG: *flees on dead roots*

Fuzzbuzz & Mr. Buggles!!!

Wildflower! Join VGDawn and become obsessive there too. We could always use more obsessive members. PM promises to be obsessive, but he won't join. *sniffles*

[wildflower]

Your sentences are funny, Gryph! Hehe. I have spanish class tomorrow, and all the homework ever is most of the time is write sentances. You have inspired me.

I think I'm going to join VGDawn just so I can yell at PM to join. Heh. Remember when BiW wouldn't join? Yeah, this was a million pages ago. But you should dig out your old arguments and use them agaist PM. Or you could threaten a stampede of mutant tumbleweeds to bury his house.

[alla]

methinks that gryph would not invoke tumbleweeds...

Hey Gryph, sorry about this morning in the chat room... i was talking with Rad over MSN and forgot to check it... Oh, and just out of curiosity, what were the vocab words?

A HP message board huh? Which one and we can go there and start saying that that isn't how magic should be done, and start making up words for the Speech heh heh heh heh

Anyways back to physics study... cyas all

Alla

[Gryphon]

*huggles* Wildflower doesn't feel like a newbie _at all_. You've read our random past.

PM! Yes, BiW would _not_ join at all. When she finally did, she loved it. OMG, you must join!.!.!.!

About the chatroom, I figured you were away, but I didn't have time to chat anyway, and I'm glad I didn't. I wouldn't have finished my homework. I still didn't, really, because somehow I forgot to write down some of the math problems I need to do. I'll ask my friends which I missed so I can do them in homeroom.

It's pretty easy to tell that you did miss some if the teacher wrote p. 217-219 #5-14, and 5-14 doesn't get past p.217...

*huggles all* School in a few minutes... Ugh