The Web Flâneur

"Are you voting, Mr. B? We voted last week at school!"
"You voted already? Downtown or at the rec center?"
"In the mail? You can do that?"

"Who'd you vote for, Mr. B?"
"Obama?" (They hope.) "McCain?" (They dread.)
"Why can't you tell us?"

"Some people think voting should be private."
"Miss Jenkins says it's rude to ask."
"It's like asking a lady how old she is."

"Who'd you vote for, Mr. B?"
"Obama?"
I nod and wink and grin.
"Yes!" They grin, too."

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Note: Amy already posted the CLOSEST book, but here are some others nearby:

"Nicholas had chair number two on the front row."
-John Grisham, "The Runaway Jury"

"She closed her pond-sized eyes and began slowly to pull in her head."
-Michael Ende, "The Neverending Story"

"You need to convey to your audience that you are changing topics, and a way to accomplish this is to insert a title slide."
-William J. Gibbs and Patricia J. Fewell, "Microsoft Office for Teachers, Third Edition"

I hope by now, you have all watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. If not, do it now.

(This is what Joss Whedon and his pals were doing during the Writer's Strike. It features Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. Also, it's fucking awesome.)

By the way, if I were to cast this with my friends, jarretttheguy would totally play Dr. Horrible, and bboyauron would be Captain Hammer.

Discuss.

Here's what I came up with:

Dear Jerry Seinfeld,

I thought your recent Microsoft commercials with Bill Gates were brilliant and inspired. After watching the commercials, I had a small favor to ask you. I would have written directly to Mr. Gates himself, but I felt that you might be a lot easier to talk to than him. You seem more open, and I feel like we share a lot of things in common. I mean, what is the deal with airline food anyway?!

The thing is: My beautiful girlfriend Amy really, really needs a new computer, and, unfortunately, we just don't have the spare money to afford one. Tell Bill we can't even run Internet Explorer for very long without it crashing. The computer is still running Windows 2000, and we would love to be able to upgrade to Vista (with all of its added perks and features).

This little gift from Bill--no, Mister Gates--would do wonders for our relationship and restore our faith in humanity. All you have to do is put a little bug in his ear for us.

Your fan (and fellow airline food critic),

Thomas Beerbower

Reply to this post, and I’ll assign you a letter. Then you come up with a list of 10 things you like that start with that letter.

My assigned letter from her random number generator was X. But then she felt pity on me and gave me a “G.”

1)  Girlfriend: I love her, and she has a cute face. Also, she cooks me tasty food.

2)  Garlic:  It makes (almost) everything more tasty. One day, I shall go back to San Francisco and eat at The Stinking Rose.

3)  Gnomes:  Incredibly fun to play, both in D&D and WoW. The only reason I don’t have a level 70 gnome in WoW is that the Horde are just so much more awesome.

4)  Games:  Be they card games, board games, RPGs, computer games, or video games, I enjoy playing games! Current favorites: Heroes V, Apples to Apples, WoW, Dungeons and Dragons (even though I have to learn 4^th Ed.)

5)  Grumbling:  My favorite form of disapproval. It shows that I don’t like something and, often, avoids the chance of conflicts brought on by this disapproval.

6)  Gummi Bears Theme:  Especially the a capella version. It’s a great song to blast out of a car window or to randomly start singing, especially if your friends join along.

7)  Greensboro:  This town where I live. It’s pretty cool. I first moved here in the fall of 2001 to go to school at Greensboro College and got my art degree there. Then I moved back here in January 2007 to start work on an Elementary Education major.

8)  German:  I really should learn it again. Not a pretty language, but lots of fun to speak. Also, the root of my last name: “Beerbower” > “Bierbauer” (“Beer Farmer”) / “Bierbrauer” (“Beer Brewer”)

9)  Gaiman, Neil:  Excellent British author. Co-wrote “Good Omens” with Terry Pratchett and wrote a number of his own short stories and novels, including “Neverwhere,” “Coraline,” and “Stardust,” and the Sandman comic/graphic novel series.

10) George R. R. Martin:  Another great author. I love and hate this man. Mainly love, but if he doesn’t hurry up and get “A Dance with Dragons” written and published, I will… probably grumble! Seriously though, if you haven’t read his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, do it now!

Raindrops fall from the sky
Plummeting like miniature ACME-brand anvils
Onto the head of a miniature coyote.

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The rain has been crazy today. I'm talking zero-vision, puddles splashing as high as the sides of my van. Apparently, this entire area of central-NC has been under both flash floods and tornado watches. Not fun for driving or walking in, but awesome to watch!

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So, today was the first day of internship when the kids were actually there. I'm with a 3rd grade class at Sedgefield Elementary, which already seems like a gigantic improvement over Hunter. The whole atmosphere just seems so much more friendly and relaxed. Teachers and staff talk more. The students seem much more eager to learn, much better behaved, and much more interested in participating in class. Of course, that may just be because it's the beginning of the school year, but I've got high hopes.

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I realized I never posted about my crazy trip this summer. Basically, I got paid--Correction: will be paid (hopefully next week) $3000 to drive a van across the country with the Hopkins 4k. Twenty-five college students biked across country from Baltimore to San Francisco. And I got to drive one of the support vehicles. Pretty fun overall, very stressful at times. All in all, though, a great experience. The whole thing really made me aware of how selfless and friendly complete strangers can be. It was awesome rolling in to a church none of us had ever been to in a town none of us had ever heard of and being welcomed with a covered dish supper, or free massages, or just a friendly smile.

Pictures are here: Check them out, and if you want to know more about any of them, let me know, and I'll fill you in. Edit: Links work now!

So I finally caught Prince Caspian at the $2 Theatre last night. While it wasn't a very good adaptation of the book, it worked pretty well as a Narnia movie. 

Maybe I'm biased by the glamour of childhood, but the Wonderworks version seemed to stick much more closely to the novel, while still coming off as a good film. It was also a shorter film (maybe 2 half-hour installments), so it didn't need to add entire action scenes to pad it out. Still, the nighttime castle fight scene was well-done and only felt out of place because I was watching the movie as an adaption of the book and not as a movie in itself. If that makes sense.

Afterwards, I went to Drips, which almost lived up to the original scene. Faze and Scott were the only folks I knew, but the atmosphere and drinks were about the same. The back room seemed a little more open and a little less cozy, but, again, I think it was just because there weren't many people there I knew.

I did have an interesting conversation with Scott, though. It started out with him commenting on Obama refusing to wear the American flag pin, moved on to the Iraq War, brought in Afghanistan and Iran, explored the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and finished with an indepth look at Scott's views on Islam and Christianity.

All in all, very interesting. And now I have some Snopes articles I need to get to Scott, but I'm not sure if I'll be back at Drips before I head back to Gboro. Anyone have an email for him?

I was thinking about checking out NewDrips (TM).

Anyone able to provide information about how it compares to OldDrips (TM)? 

Step 1: Put your iPod or iTunes on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Edit: Bold the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.

((Okay, so since Anne did 30, I naturally had to do 40. Enjoy.))

( Get to work! )

Also, if you look at my actual eljay, you'll notice I've sold out. But advertisements = More icons = More pretty pictures to amuse me temporarily.

Currently, 1/3 of my family are on a cruise; 1/3, in Disney World; 1/6, at college; and 1/6, alone in Hickory for the week. Oh well, that provides me less distractions from my WoW time when I'm at home, at least. Le sigh.

((Note: Random songs may help you learn a lot about your life. Once Anne analyzes mine, I'm sure I will know much more than I do now.))

Put your music library on shuffle and answer the questions with songs in the order they come up. it doesn't really make sense at times, but some answers you come up with will freak you out.
( Let's See Here... )

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Okay, Anne, have fun!