dicotomygrrl took me to see Donnie Darko last night in Coolage Corner. I'd never seen it before.

( spoilers )

The ferst time I was in Egypt a simplified speling epidemic had broeken out and the atmosfeer was electric with feeling enjenderd bi the subject. This was about fiev thouzand yeers ago. The simplifiers had rizen in revolt agenst the hieroglifics. An uncl of Cadmus hoo was out of a job had cum to Egypt and was trieing to introdoos the Phonecian alfabet and get it adopted insted of the hieroglifics. The Simplifiers wer fue, the Opozishun wer multituedinus. Amung the Simplifiers wer meny men of lerning and distinkshun, maenly litererry men and members of colej facultys, but all ranks and condishuns of men and all graeds of intelect, scolarship, and ignorans wer reprezented bi the Opozishun. Uncl Cadmus began an object leson, with chauk, on a cupl of blakbords. On wun of them he roet in hieroglifics: "At this time the King pozest of cavalry 214,580 men and 222,631 horses, of infantry 84,946 men, 37,264 transportaeshun carts, 321 elefants, and 28,954 camels." It fild the bord and reqierd twenty-six minits of time. Then he repeeted it on anuther blakbord in Italian script and Arabic noomerals and did it in wun minit and a qorter. Then he sed, "Mi argument is befor U. Wun of the objecshuns of the hieroglifics is that it takes the brietest puepil nien yeers to get the forms and thair meenings bi hart; it takes the rest of the naeshun all thair daes to accomplish it -- it is a lief sentens. If you wil renouns the hieroglifics and adopt riten werds insted, a tremendus advantej wil be gaend. Bi U? No, not bi U. U hav spent yur lievz in mastering the hieroglifics, and to U thae ar simpl, and the efect plezant to the ie, and eeven buetiful. But I apeel to U in behaf of jeneraeshuns yet to cum. Let yur suns and dauters adopt the riten werds and the alfabet, and thus saev milyons of yeers of uesles time and laebor." The Opozishun roez and combated his reezoning in the uezhual wae. Thoez peepl sed thae had long bin acustomd to hieroglifics and had deer and saecred memorys about them, that thae luvd to sit on a barrel under an umbrela in the brilyant sun of Egypt and spel out the rabits and eegls and aligaetors and sawteeth, and taek an our and a haf to the Lord's Prair, and weep with roemantic emoeshun at the thaut that thae had, at moest, but aet or ten yeers between themselvs and the graev for the enjoyment of this extasy.     —Mark Twain

I'm qikly becuming enamord with SoundSpel. Thair ar meny reezons for wonting to reform the speling of English, frum maeking it eezyer for maeking the tranzishun to English eezyer to lern for imigrants and uther non naetiv speekers to maeking literasy skils mor nacheral for naetiv speekers.

It wuud allso help solv a frustraeting ishoo I, and meny uthers, offen cum acros: thair ar meny werds I am qiet familyar with in print but hav no iedeea how to pronouns. Having red it meny tiems but never having herd it properly pronounst, I fiend it dificult to uez thees werds in oral conversaeshun. Speekers of langgwejes such as Spanish or German do not hav this problem and with a reformd sistem such as SoundSpel, English speekers wuudn't eether.

For sumwun uezd to the oeld speling sistem, SoundSpel is prity eezy to lern to reed but a task to lern to riet. Becauz of the readability of SoundSpel; laebels, siens, and public docuements cuud to be qikly chaenjd to SoundSpel without cauz much in the wae of confuezhun.

I am serten that no amount of nujing and cajoeling cuud sucseed in geting sum peepl to swich oever to SoundSpel. But, as pointed out bi Twain, this isn't for the curent jeneraeshun but of the jeneraeshuns yet to cum. The chaenj cuud be handld in a jeneraeshunal wae. Children cuud be taut to riet SoundSpel, but be instructed on how to reed the oelder spelings until thoes spelings becum obsoleet.

Taeking the leed in speling reform wuud be a huej advantej for the Uenieted Staets. It wuud esenshaly enshrien American English as standard. However, I do hav seerius douts that a cuntry that veeemently rezists adopting metric wuud undertaek sumthing as braezen as speling reform.

The American Literasy Counsil offers free sofftwair that wil automaticaly translaet standard English speling to SoundSpel (Microsoft Werd is reqierd). It is a bit bugy and I do fiend it anoiing that the proegram consistently drops the "e" frum "the", which isn't standard SoundSpel. The problem is eezily fixt with a serch and replaes. It maeks a fue uthere errors as wel, and eeven tho the rezults must stil be proofred it stil saevs time and increeses acuerasy for thoes nue to SoundSpel like mieself. In fact, I uezd it to prepare this poest. Perhaps I shuud practis rieting longger strings in SoundSpel.

Poll #844112
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Whut do U think of SoundSpel? (0 = "Pleez no! It herts, maek it stop!"; 10 = "Wun of th best iedeeas ever, we shuud all swich oever imeedyetly")

dicotomygrrl came over tonight. We had intended to watch Firefly, but since we would have only had time to watch one episode, we decided to just hang out instead. She showed me around a favorite time waster of hers, Kingdom of Loathing. She walked me through creating a character: Seroquel, Disco Bandit. I got to beat up bunnies and cans of asparagus with my disco ball. If I continue to play, I'll get to the point where I will be able to handily dispose of Orcish Frat Boys like dicotomygrrl can. I, however, am wondering if I really need a new way to waste time. I will probably poke around the game some more, but I will endeavor not to get too sucked in.

Upon leaving purpleglitter's apartment, I noticed another interesting set of tracks at the bottom of the step. Bunny tracks! I haven't seen a bunny in Arlington as long as I have lived here. I always figured there was too little open area available for them to move in. I guess there is at least one bunny living in our little section of Arlington (not counting merryperseis, of course).

ganked from kaligrrrl
for merryperseis

An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside where it will stay for the next 20 years. The 200-foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy's Piedmont region. Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool". full story

Poll #193687
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What pet(s) do you have? (check as many as apply)

Went over to visit dan4th today. We watched Watership Down, an excellent animated movie that I'd heard of but never seen. Bunnies Rule.

After Watership Down, we played Snarf Quest. I really enjoyed learning Snarf Quest and now want to get the game for myself. Alas, finances won't permit any miscellaneous expenditures at this time. Maybe next month.

dabunny joined us stir fry and a viewing of Dark Star, a comical 70's sci-fi film. It is very difficult to tell if they meant it to be a serious movie or not, but was fun to watch nonetheless.

Went to the Salvation Army with purpleglitter. She bought me a wonder pair of knee high boots we found there for only $5. They will look perfect with my school girl outfits. I'm very excited.

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merryperseis took me out to Buddha's Delight for a very belated birthday dinner. The food was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. It's such a good feeling being able to order anything from the menu.

After dinner, merryperseis and I took a stroll down the bike trail in the gentle evening mist holding hands and occasionally kissing. She was so incredibly beautiful tonight. My bunny angel.

Tuesday morning, riga_mortia and I set off for Plattsburgh, New York. We got out of the house very early, and made good time to South Station. The air seemed hopeful and the prospect of leaving the city for a few days was very exciting.

Things started to go wrong when we got to the ticket counter at Greyhound. They ended up charging us a rate several hundred dollars over what they had quoted us over the phone. Not knowing of any other choice, we forked over the cash.

Quickly, I realized I had forgotten my ID. Realizing that this meant that the trip would be much more problematic, we went decided to take the next bus out, and take a taxi back to riga_mortia’s house and pick up my ID.

My ID wasn’t at her house, and we were running out of time, so we called another taxi to run back to my house, as I was sure I must have left it there.

On the way out to the taxi, riga_mortia had a nasty fall onto an evil metal thing laying on the sidewalk. She ended up with a nasty looking wound on her knee. I got our luggage together and she limped into the taxi.

My ID wasn’t at my house either. To add to the fun, we quickly discovered that riga_mortia had left her purse in the taxi.

grrldan arrived home and offered his help. And what a wonderful help he was. He patched up riga_mortia’s knee very skillfully and made us both much-needed cosmopolitans.

I decided to call the liquor store I had gone to the night before, in a last hope that it was where I lost my ID. I got on my computer to get the number for the store and found that my monitor had completely died.

grrldan looked up the number for me on his computer. However, when I called, I was told that my ID wasn’t there either.

Giving up on my ID, we called the taxi company and asked about riga_mortia’s purse. They had it and grrldan said he would give us a ride to retrieve it as well as anywhere else we needed to go. I can’t thank him enough for all the help he was to us.

riga_mortia and I figured out that it would actually be cheaper to rent a car and drive it to Plattsburgh than to take the bus, even with the 15% charge for returning the tickets. So, we called up several rental places to get a car. However, no one would rent us a car, because I don’t have a credit card or my own auto insurance (either one would have worked) and riga_mortia is under 25 and only has a permit.

We worked out a plan with katia25 (riga_mortia’s stepmother). We would wire her the money to rent a car. She would rent it, drive from Plattsburgh to Boston then drive us back up to Plattsburgh.

First thing was first, the tickets and the taxis had wiped out our cash reserves. We needed to go to my bank. As I had lost my bankcard the week before, and now didn’t have my ID, I wrote grrldan a check for the money I needed and he ran into the bank to cash it. A few minutes later, he came out and told me the people in the bank wanted to talk to me inside.

They told me that my check was suspect, because it was written out of sequence (another symptom of my absentmindedness). However, they had my signature card on file at the bank, and I was able to get the money out myself.

Next stop was Stop and Shop to wire the funds for the car. Again, grrldan came to the rescue. As the only one with an ID at that point, he had to be the one to actually send the money on its way.

After Stop and Shop, we went to the Yellow Cab office. On the journey there, we encountered a traffic jam. After waiting about 15 minutes in the baking sun, traffic began to move again, and we got riga_mortia’s purse.

Before he had to be on his way for his own scheduled activities for the day, grrldan dropped us off at the DMV so that I could get a temporary license for the trip.

When katia25 arrived, we grabbed our stuff and piled into the car. Our troubles were over, or so we thought.

We quickly got lost in Vermont. We spent a long time on the empty highways in the land of moose and bumps. After wandering and wandering, we found a hotel and asked for directions. We apparently missed our turn by an hour and a half. Instead of having to back track, we were directed on an alternative route. All in all, the 3 hour trip ended up taking more than 6, and by the time it was over both riga_mortia and I were both feeling slightly ill.

We checked into our hotel, only to find that it was a complete pit. It was more of a no-tell motel than anything else. The one redeeming quality, is that it had a rustic Bonnie and Clyde feel to it. I felt that the feds would be breaking in the door any minute.

In the morning, we carted ourselves over to the Super 8. A little more pricey, but a lot less shitty. At this point we both realized that the slightly ill we felt the night before was not going to simply go away. The slightly ill had definite plans of being more than slightly.

In the very late afternoon, we finally got over to see riga_mortia’s family. They were all very accepting and nice. I got along with all of them very well. We all got quite floopy, and Chantea (riga_mortia’s sister) got quite a bit too floopy.

katia25 dropped us off near the beach, where riga_mortia and I splashed together on the beautiful shores of Lake Champlain. It was probably the most beautiful part of the entire trip, however being wet in the chilly night air probably didn’t help us with our developing colds.

By the time we woke up the next morning, both riga_mortia and I were really feeling sick. Not only that, having spent so much time in close quarters with all the stress of the trip, we starting to get on each other’s nerves. We never yelled, but we definitely weren’t getting along very well.

Pat (riga_mortia’s dad) and katia25 took us to Ponderosa in the afternoon. I was worried there wouldn’t be anything to eat, but to my surprise the buffet had a selection of vegetarian options.

The food did not sit well with riga_mortia, who was rapidly getting more ill than me. She ended up getting sick all over the bathroom of Ponderosa. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel so she could get some rest.

In the evening, we went back to katia25’s and Pat’s house and watched The Way of the Gun with Ryan Phillippe. I enjoyed the movie, and definitely recommend it.

Back at the hotel we decided that with both of us feeling ill and the trip generally not going very well, that we should head back home Friday as originally planned, instead of Saturday morning as we had been considering.

On the ferry across Lake Champlain on the way home, I decided to take a picture of the mountains above the water. Of course, I dropped the camera. It bounced off the deck, and I watched in slow motion as it splashed into the water below. At least it wasn’t the one I had taken the pictures on earlier in the trip.

Back in Boston, I hoped that we could finally relax, but new drama has come forward. Things just don’t seem to settle down nowadays. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going and going and going.