I'm speaking in tentacles!
Sep. 9th, 2005 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kleenexwomanPreacher Rick is back!
Those of you who go to CMU have probably already seen him in the Pierce-Anspach courtyard, but for those of you who don’t: Preacher Rick is our resident crazy ranting evangelist. He likes to set up a sandwich board in the courtyard and yell about how all us liberal promiscuous gay drug-taking atheist college students are going to hell and God loves us. The first time I ever encountered him, he was ranting about gay marriage and I made the mistake of getting upset and screaming that he was a judgmental bastard. He thought it was very funny.
Anyway, people sometimes like to get into arguments with Preacher Rick. I enjoy listening to these, so on my way out of German class yesterday I swung by and managed to catch the end of an argument between Preacher Rick and a young man with a goatee and one of those big earring earplug things, the kind that Roman Dirge wears.
Earplug dude: “But how can you ignore empirical evidence like that? That’s just wrong, man.”
Preacher Rick: “I don’t ignore empirical evidence! I’m a scientist too. I majored in Biology.”
Earplug dude: “That doesn’t mean you’re a scientist, man. It just means you majored in Biology.”
Preacher Rick: “I am a scientist. I have a website where I have empirically proven the Bible through science.” (I don’t think that word means what I think he thinks it means. Empirical, “Relying on or derived from observation or experiment; verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment.”)
Earplug dude: “Yeah, sure. What’s the address?”
Preacher Rick: “Anyway, you’ve got to have faith! And everyone has faith!”
Me: (seeing my chance to be a know-it-all) “Actually, that’s not true. And it’s been empirically proven.”
Preacher Rick: “Oh yeah? How so?”
Me: (launches into 5-minute explanation about the VMAT2 gene, probably BSing a little in the process)
Preacher Rick: “But science lies! Everyone has faith. Jesus even said so. God has given everyone a measure of faith, even if we have to dig it out of ya!”
Earplug dude: “Weren’t you just listening to the girl? Empirical evidence, man.”
Preacher Rick: (to me) “I bet you that we can get that faith out of you. I bet you will find Jesus.”
Me: “Ten bucks says you’re on.”
Preacher Rick: “I don’t play for money, I play for souls. Have you ever wanted a supernatural sign from God?”
Me: “It had better be quick. I have to go to class.” (I didn’t.)
Preacher Rick: “You can’t just spread out a fleece like the moneychangers and order God to it.” (So people can summon God to possess warm fuzzy polyester blankets?) “God will show you the way soon. I’ll pray for you!” (He looks up at the sky, holds his hands up.) “God, show this girl a sign!”
Me: “Um, okay. Tell you what, I’ll keep my eyes open, and if God sends me anything supernatural in the next week, I’ll totally tell you.”
Preacher Rick: “You will do that.”
I can’t pass this up. I’ve hatched a plan. If I see Preacher Rick again within the next week, he is going to hear all about my supernatural vision of R’Leyh and how he should totally start worshipping the One True Elder God. I may also print out the Jack Chick Lovecraft parody to give him. Will update if anything happens.
In other news, I switched my RP characters for Thursday. I am no longer an idealistic monk, I am in a game called Naruto which is apparently about ninjas. I am an eight-year-old ninja. The reason I have switched is because Bekka and Ben, who created the Naruto game, were sad because they didn’t have many players, and Matt the original DM had too many already anyway. I figure one game is as good as another, and even though everyone took about 3 hours to make their characters, the ninja game is shaping up to be fun. I already caught a pet mouse because I thought it was a rabbit and wanted to bring it back to my sensei so we could eat it. (My character, though she has an intelligence score of 19, is totally a city kid. Plus, she’s eight. At eight, you’re still dumb.)
Ganked from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
evillunch: “Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them here, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much.”
I have jiggered these around somewhat.
Being subversive: I try to make most of my writing a little subversive or in some way unexpected, even if it’s just a fluffy slash story or a silly poem about squirrels. It makes people think, and it’s much more fun than trying not to offend people.
Conspiracy theories: The weirder, the better. I don’t really care who really shot JFK or whether there really were aliens at Roswell (it was just Zoidberg and Bender, btw). I want to know about how the Girl Scouts cause crop circles and how the Masons are really the remnants of an ancient Cthulhu cult that put marijuana leaves on the backs of dollar bills.
Devo: A new interest, just this past week. Geeky dystopian New Wave punk rock. (Am I just imagining things, or does Mark Mothersbaugh sound eerily like David Byrne? They both have an odd, thick, warbling vocal quality that I can’t really describe.)
Fairy tales: I started reading these when I was a tiny kid and never stopped. I particularly liked the Grimm Brothers and the Arabian Nights, and I’d make up my own fairytales that were just mishmashes of already existing ones. There are really only a few fairytale plots, anyway; they’re all archetypes that have been jumbled around and made to interact with each other in new ways.
Guns ‘N’ Roses: The band that began my adolescent rebellion, and the first music I listened to that I picked out on my own. Before that, it was all Mom’s Enya and Dad’s Steely Dan and the Hanson and RadioAAHS! of the other kids in my class. I listened to “Welcome to the Jungle” 12 times in a row and never looked back.
Invader Zim: Most everyone knows this little cartoon by Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.” (Why they let him have his own kid’s show, I will never know. But I’m damn glad they did.) Probably the weirdest thing to show on Nickelodeon in recent years. Disturbed small children. They cancelled it, but it still shows on various NickToons super-cable channels. I have the first season on DVD.
Komodo dragons:
Huge lizards that eat goats and have poisonous spit. Actually, the spit is not poisonous, it just has bacteria in it that get into the bite and keep it festering instead of healing. If you get bit by a Komodo dragon, your best bet is probably to get the area in question amputated. The young ones sit in trees so that the old ones will not eat them. I have loved these animals ever since I read “Last Chance to See,” by Douglas Adams.
Noise music: Just what it sounds like. Atonal, unmelodic, unstructured noises that have to be music, since they can’t be anything else. Best when it’s either semi-subliminal ambient stuff like Boris, particularly their Absolute Go, or freaky soundscapes like Wolf Eyes, particularly their “Village Oblivia”. I’ll do a YouSendIt on these someday.
Parodies: MAD Magazine used to be good at these (it’s started to suck recently). In my opinion, best when done as pastiches, exaggerated imitations of a thing or style without actually being mean-spirited. This is hard to do, but worth it.
Psychology: How people’s minds work, and how to maintain and fix them. Of natural interest to anyone who is interested in humans at all. One of my majors.
Royal Oak: A little suburb of Detroit that used to be filled to the brim with punks, Goths, and bikers every night. Cool shops, weird art galleries, trendy coffeeshops, interesting restaurants, and concert venues. Has become gentrified and yuppified up the ass, particularly since Cat’s Meow moved out and the Lofts moved in.
Temporal displacement: “Time travel,” in layman’s terms. I like saying it this way because it makes me feel smart.
Things that provoke thought: Self-explanatory. (I stole this interest fromthatnoise. Thanks, Brian!)
VALIS: A book by Philip K. Dick that totally screwed with my head and made me want to convert to Gnosticism in 12th grade. (I didn’t, after I found out that the stuff about pink light, aliens, and parallel universes weren’t actually Gnostic text, just things he hallucinated.) Has two other books in the series: Radio Free Albemuth, which is said to be the rough draft for VALIS, and The Divine Invasion, which made me wobbly for three days after I read it. Good stuff.
Writing workshops: A good way to work on your writing and socialize all at the same time. Brainstorm, tell jokes, receive constructive criticism or get your ego stroked. It’s all good. I currently go to Fiction Collective (Sundays, 8 PM, Kaya), and will soon be going to Poetry Workshop (Wednesdays, 8 PM, not sure where yet).
One last thing: Bruce Campbell’s new movie The Man with the Screaming Brain will be on the Sci-Fi channel (channel 38 in my dorm) on Saturday September 10th, 8 PM Eastern. I am planning to go up to Video Land tonight and get a blank tape (and then convince my roommate to show me how to use her VCR) so that I can tape it, ‘cause I missed my chance to see it when they were showing it at the Royal Oak Art Theatre.
Those of you who go to CMU have probably already seen him in the Pierce-Anspach courtyard, but for those of you who don’t: Preacher Rick is our resident crazy ranting evangelist. He likes to set up a sandwich board in the courtyard and yell about how all us liberal promiscuous gay drug-taking atheist college students are going to hell and God loves us. The first time I ever encountered him, he was ranting about gay marriage and I made the mistake of getting upset and screaming that he was a judgmental bastard. He thought it was very funny.
Anyway, people sometimes like to get into arguments with Preacher Rick. I enjoy listening to these, so on my way out of German class yesterday I swung by and managed to catch the end of an argument between Preacher Rick and a young man with a goatee and one of those big earring earplug things, the kind that Roman Dirge wears.
Earplug dude: “But how can you ignore empirical evidence like that? That’s just wrong, man.”
Preacher Rick: “I don’t ignore empirical evidence! I’m a scientist too. I majored in Biology.”
Earplug dude: “That doesn’t mean you’re a scientist, man. It just means you majored in Biology.”
Preacher Rick: “I am a scientist. I have a website where I have empirically proven the Bible through science.” (I don’t think that word means what I think he thinks it means. Empirical, “Relying on or derived from observation or experiment; verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment.”)
Earplug dude: “Yeah, sure. What’s the address?”
Preacher Rick: “Anyway, you’ve got to have faith! And everyone has faith!”
Me: (seeing my chance to be a know-it-all) “Actually, that’s not true. And it’s been empirically proven.”
Preacher Rick: “Oh yeah? How so?”
Me: (launches into 5-minute explanation about the VMAT2 gene, probably BSing a little in the process)
Preacher Rick: “But science lies! Everyone has faith. Jesus even said so. God has given everyone a measure of faith, even if we have to dig it out of ya!”
Earplug dude: “Weren’t you just listening to the girl? Empirical evidence, man.”
Preacher Rick: (to me) “I bet you that we can get that faith out of you. I bet you will find Jesus.”
Me: “Ten bucks says you’re on.”
Preacher Rick: “I don’t play for money, I play for souls. Have you ever wanted a supernatural sign from God?”
Me: “It had better be quick. I have to go to class.” (I didn’t.)
Preacher Rick: “You can’t just spread out a fleece like the moneychangers and order God to it.” (So people can summon God to possess warm fuzzy polyester blankets?) “God will show you the way soon. I’ll pray for you!” (He looks up at the sky, holds his hands up.) “God, show this girl a sign!”
Me: “Um, okay. Tell you what, I’ll keep my eyes open, and if God sends me anything supernatural in the next week, I’ll totally tell you.”
Preacher Rick: “You will do that.”
I can’t pass this up. I’ve hatched a plan. If I see Preacher Rick again within the next week, he is going to hear all about my supernatural vision of R’Leyh and how he should totally start worshipping the One True Elder God. I may also print out the Jack Chick Lovecraft parody to give him. Will update if anything happens.
In other news, I switched my RP characters for Thursday. I am no longer an idealistic monk, I am in a game called Naruto which is apparently about ninjas. I am an eight-year-old ninja. The reason I have switched is because Bekka and Ben, who created the Naruto game, were sad because they didn’t have many players, and Matt the original DM had too many already anyway. I figure one game is as good as another, and even though everyone took about 3 hours to make their characters, the ninja game is shaping up to be fun. I already caught a pet mouse because I thought it was a rabbit and wanted to bring it back to my sensei so we could eat it. (My character, though she has an intelligence score of 19, is totally a city kid. Plus, she’s eight. At eight, you’re still dumb.)
Ganked from
evillunch: “Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them here, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much.” I have jiggered these around somewhat.
Being subversive: I try to make most of my writing a little subversive or in some way unexpected, even if it’s just a fluffy slash story or a silly poem about squirrels. It makes people think, and it’s much more fun than trying not to offend people.
Conspiracy theories: The weirder, the better. I don’t really care who really shot JFK or whether there really were aliens at Roswell (it was just Zoidberg and Bender, btw). I want to know about how the Girl Scouts cause crop circles and how the Masons are really the remnants of an ancient Cthulhu cult that put marijuana leaves on the backs of dollar bills.
Devo: A new interest, just this past week. Geeky dystopian New Wave punk rock. (Am I just imagining things, or does Mark Mothersbaugh sound eerily like David Byrne? They both have an odd, thick, warbling vocal quality that I can’t really describe.)
Fairy tales: I started reading these when I was a tiny kid and never stopped. I particularly liked the Grimm Brothers and the Arabian Nights, and I’d make up my own fairytales that were just mishmashes of already existing ones. There are really only a few fairytale plots, anyway; they’re all archetypes that have been jumbled around and made to interact with each other in new ways.
Guns ‘N’ Roses: The band that began my adolescent rebellion, and the first music I listened to that I picked out on my own. Before that, it was all Mom’s Enya and Dad’s Steely Dan and the Hanson and RadioAAHS! of the other kids in my class. I listened to “Welcome to the Jungle” 12 times in a row and never looked back.
Invader Zim: Most everyone knows this little cartoon by Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.” (Why they let him have his own kid’s show, I will never know. But I’m damn glad they did.) Probably the weirdest thing to show on Nickelodeon in recent years. Disturbed small children. They cancelled it, but it still shows on various NickToons super-cable channels. I have the first season on DVD.
Komodo dragons:
Huge lizards that eat goats and have poisonous spit. Actually, the spit is not poisonous, it just has bacteria in it that get into the bite and keep it festering instead of healing. If you get bit by a Komodo dragon, your best bet is probably to get the area in question amputated. The young ones sit in trees so that the old ones will not eat them. I have loved these animals ever since I read “Last Chance to See,” by Douglas Adams.
Noise music: Just what it sounds like. Atonal, unmelodic, unstructured noises that have to be music, since they can’t be anything else. Best when it’s either semi-subliminal ambient stuff like Boris, particularly their Absolute Go, or freaky soundscapes like Wolf Eyes, particularly their “Village Oblivia”. I’ll do a YouSendIt on these someday.
Parodies: MAD Magazine used to be good at these (it’s started to suck recently). In my opinion, best when done as pastiches, exaggerated imitations of a thing or style without actually being mean-spirited. This is hard to do, but worth it.
Psychology: How people’s minds work, and how to maintain and fix them. Of natural interest to anyone who is interested in humans at all. One of my majors.
Royal Oak: A little suburb of Detroit that used to be filled to the brim with punks, Goths, and bikers every night. Cool shops, weird art galleries, trendy coffeeshops, interesting restaurants, and concert venues. Has become gentrified and yuppified up the ass, particularly since Cat’s Meow moved out and the Lofts moved in.
Temporal displacement: “Time travel,” in layman’s terms. I like saying it this way because it makes me feel smart.
Things that provoke thought: Self-explanatory. (I stole this interest from
thatnoise. Thanks, Brian!) VALIS: A book by Philip K. Dick that totally screwed with my head and made me want to convert to Gnosticism in 12th grade. (I didn’t, after I found out that the stuff about pink light, aliens, and parallel universes weren’t actually Gnostic text, just things he hallucinated.) Has two other books in the series: Radio Free Albemuth, which is said to be the rough draft for VALIS, and The Divine Invasion, which made me wobbly for three days after I read it. Good stuff.
Writing workshops: A good way to work on your writing and socialize all at the same time. Brainstorm, tell jokes, receive constructive criticism or get your ego stroked. It’s all good. I currently go to Fiction Collective (Sundays, 8 PM, Kaya), and will soon be going to Poetry Workshop (Wednesdays, 8 PM, not sure where yet).
One last thing: Bruce Campbell’s new movie The Man with the Screaming Brain will be on the Sci-Fi channel (channel 38 in my dorm) on Saturday September 10th, 8 PM Eastern. I am planning to go up to Video Land tonight and get a blank tape (and then convince my roommate to show me how to use her VCR) so that I can tape it, ‘cause I missed my chance to see it when they were showing it at the Royal Oak Art Theatre.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:17 pm (UTC)I love having folks like Preacher Rick around. Mental illness can be so entertaining when it's done right--Austin has a celebrity homeless person who makes more money than almost anyone else I know, and has appeared in a SuperBowl commercial.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 10:38 pm (UTC)Also, the thing about "laying out a fleece like the moneylenders"--if that's an accurate quote, it sounds as if he doesn't even know the subject matter. That, in my book, places him in a category with The Time Cube Guy (http://www.timecube.com/).
But he sounds amusing, whether I'm right or not.
I'm off to go see The Aristocrats. Wish me luck!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 04:23 am (UTC)Enjoy The Aristocrats! Don't choke laughing.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 09:12 pm (UTC)Cubic Katrina above god power, "THINK CUBIC".
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:24 pm (UTC)*notes a mention of Poetry Collective* So no RP with us, by the looks of it?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:28 pm (UTC)Poetry Collective still appears to be up in the air, and I don't know what is going on with it. If the Poets In Charge have not gotten things together by Wednesday, I will probably write it off anyway and will be able to play with you guys. Still don't know, though....sorry...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-09 09:50 pm (UTC)2. I saw Komodo Dragons up close at a zoo... the Forth Worth one, I think. They're awesome.
3. Savannah Monitors look like smaller Komodo Dragons, but have much better tempers and are often kept as pets.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 01:35 am (UTC)Damn, now I want a lizard again.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 01:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 02:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 04:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 06:36 am (UTC)He's a bit hung up on James Joyce, but that's the Irish in him.
Do you know what Naruto is?
Date: 2005-09-09 10:14 pm (UTC)http://groups.msn.com/NarutoMangaReturns
Re: Do you know what Naruto is?
Date: 2005-09-10 04:26 am (UTC)Re: Do you know what Naruto is?
Date: 2005-09-10 05:04 am (UTC)Re: Noise Music
Date: 2005-09-10 01:02 am (UTC)"Metal Machine Music"
1975
Before you listen to it, get a copy of Lester Bangs' "Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung" and read the MMM section.
Then get MMM.
Then listen to it.
Then, I guess, read and listen at the same time.
That is all.
*clicks heels*
\
(when you see the cover, you'll understand)
Re: Noise Music
Date: 2005-09-10 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-10 09:25 pm (UTC)