solarbird | stuff and bother

Four Petals

Not in a very good mood today. Or yesterday, really, or the day before. I've been watching too much real-world idiocy and asshattery, mostly via news and current events, but not entirely.

For example, last night, I was almost in a five-car pileup because two asshats in an on-ramp couldn't be bothered to look at the lane into which they were merging. Seriously, I'm pretty sure they didn't look at all; I had to do Danger Driving to prevent a massive collision. Basically, I was trapped in front and on the left by other vehicles; they tried to merge directly into my car (yes, both of them; yes, the second was tailgating the first); I slowed sharply to try to get behind the guy who was blocking my escape route on the left; the guy behind him gunned it and tried to cut me off, even as the two on-ramp cars were merging into my lane, both of which, I stress, would hit me if they actually entered my lane. (I also note that at no point did these other cars make any attempt to slow, or otherwise avoid merging into my car. I managed to wedge in behind the lead left car before the second left car could cut me off, and the two mergers swerved to where I had been just in time to avoid crashing into the Jersey barrier at the end of the on-ramp.

All that took place in about two seconds.

A couple of minutes later, I saw another car - maybe one of the involved cars, but I'm not certain - force another vehicle to emergency-drive into the carpool lane, via a lane change into that vehicle's location. Unfortunately, I did not get the license plate number.

So anyway, I'm having an irritating week.

FOUR JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE:
1. Radio on-air personality. Yes, really.
2. Software Design Engineer and other forms of computer wonkage. I had one software job that turned into kind of a researcher position, in genetics. It's my only paper - so far. Grad school should help change that.
3. Writer. I've linked to some articles. I have another new one coming out, too.
4. Artist. Primarily freelance design and sculpture. I almost got hired as a video games artist out of college, but the company got bought and I ended up eventually at Microsoft as an SDE.

FOUR MOVIES I COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AND OVER:
1. Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi)
2. The Manchurian Candidate
3. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
4. Casablanca
...tho' there are really many others. I like film as an art form. I took courses on cinema in college. I loved them very much. In another life, I could have been a film critic, or worse, a film academic. ^_^

FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED (this is one of the few in order: most recent to earliest):
1. Kenmore, Washington
2. Seattle, Washington
3. Lexington, Kentucky
4. Deerfield, Massachusetts

FOUR CURRENT T.V. SHOWS I LOVE TO WATCH:
1. Doctor Who
2. LOST
...that's actually all I watch on purpose that're currently on the air. However, I am also watching new to me in DVD form:
3. Haibane Renmei (灰羽連盟, Charcoal Feather Federation)
4. Rahxephon (ラーゼフォン)

FOUR PLACES I HAVE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland - also other parts of the Scottish south
2. San Antonio, Texas, USA
3. Disneyland, Anaheim, California, USA
4. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
(If you're wondering, Thailand wasn't a vacation. Neither were my brief stops in Tokyo, tho' that second stop sure as hell felt like one at the time.)

FOUR WEBSITES I VISIT DAILY:
1. Livejournal (gigantic cluster)
2. Marketwatch (marketwatch.com - weekdays only), along with a few other related sites
3. Energy Bulletin (energybulletin.net - again, along with a few other sites)
4. Several topical-news blogs, Andrew Sullivan's (andrewsullivan.com) being the most active, and about a zillion webcomics ^_^
(It may surprise you that I do not check the fundamentalist sites daily. I can't stand to.)

FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS:
1. Pho, specifically at Than Brothers. Mmmm, so tasty.
2. Sushi kinds: sake, unagi and seared ahi in particular
3. Choco Baby
4. I make a very good spaghetti sauce, I think. I'm fond of it, anyway.
Or, if drinks count, strike nr. 4 and replace it with:
4. Good quality tea of most all kinds. (I have not been fond of any pu-erh tea I have tried. It's not awful, I just haven't been particularly fond of it.) I order looseleaf teas from uptontea.com and can offer a few starter recommendations.

FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
I love Cascadia; I don't want to move. But places I want to visit:
1. Vancouver (We go there semi-regularly but it's been a while.)
2. Japan - Tokyo, of course, Kyoto, of course, and, well, a lot of other places; it's a big country.
3. Cambodia - Angkor Wat, of course, but there are other sites as well, tho' I'd have to look up their names at this point. Also, Viet Nam and other parts of southeast Asia - even Thailand, which I'd like to visit again under less annoying circumstances.
4. North Korea, which you can't and I don't want to fund the regime anyway, out of intense curiosity; also Cuba, because the American government says you can't.

Alternatively, if they don't mean physical location, but instead mean situation:
1. Not fighting fundamentalist politics
2. In graduate school
3. um... winning the lotto? Mmmm, winning the lotto.
4. ZOMG POLLY'S ATTACKING SOMETHING IN HER SLEEP THIS IS SO CUTE LITTLE KITTY DREAM TWITCHES! okay no time for any more of this now, must watch cat. ^_^