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Random Thoughts
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( 5:25 PM ) Leto
Can you believe this junk mail I got today? It's even stupider than the "Iraqi Most Wanted Playing Cards" someone keeps trying to pawn off on me.
Sick and tired of your stupid friends getting high paying jobs because they have a degree?
Does the prospect of studying hard and wasting years of your life and THOUSANDS of dollars so you MIGHT get a decent career sound dumb?
We offer Bachelors, Masters, MBA, Doctorate (PHD) and All Diplomas! INCREASE YOUR EARNING POWER BY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS A YEAR! IT'S EASY! CALL -number-NOW. THE LINE IS OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY.
No Books, No Classes, No Exams or Interviews. Just call this number and give yourself a career advantage over your friends and co-workers.
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( 3:19 PM ) Leto
When I imagine stories in my head, it's like I *am* the main character and I make myself feel everything. Sometimes I can even shed tears when my character is experiencing a particularly sad or touching moment.
But this doesn't translate into writing. You can't make the reader feel what you feel. Even if you use lots of emotive words and describe at length how your character feels (which is usually bad and leaves nowhere for the reader's imagination to go - the most sad stories are the ones where, when something bad happens to a character, you understand from the rest of the story just how much this means to the character and how much it affects them, and you can imagine how bad they must feel, so you feel bad with them), it all depends on how the reader feels at the time they're reading. Will they be reading the story seriously, engaged in it and following it with interest? I know there are terribly sad books that I can read dispassionately the first or second time, then cry at length the third time. So much of it depends on the temperament of the reader, but I guess a good writer has an advantage when it comes to engaging the reader and evoking feelings in them.
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( 8:47 PM ) Leto
Observation: my hard drive booting up sounds not unlike a plane taking off. Should I be concerned about this?
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( 6:24 PM ) Leto
Few little quotes.
"She's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one." -Oscar Levant
"The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it." -Jackie Gleason
"When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?"
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( 6:20 PM ) Leto
Today was a stunner, a genuinely beautiful day. It's like a day from heaven. Today is Good Friday and I went to church, and the day is so beautiful, and it's good to be alive.
I heard something that makes a lot of sense to me. "For the Christian, this world is the closest you can get to hell. For the non-Christian, this world is the closest you can get to heaven." This world is corrupt and fallen but there are still many good things in it - all good things come from God; all love, friendship, fun, laughter, beauty, peace exist because He exists in this world. In hell, which means separation from God, there will be nothing good at all, but only the worst will remain, with nothing to redeem it.
It reminds me of what C. S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters - something like, the devil can't make anything good. He can pervert good things; sin is sometimes the pollution or perversion of something that was originally good, but the good part of it comes from God.
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( 9:15 PM ) Leto
Psalm 84 is great. Here is some of it.
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.
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( 3:14 PM ) Leto
21636.
I just did a word count of this story I've been writing, and that's what it came to.
o.O.
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( 7:32 PM ) Leto
It's probably a good thing that I'm not allowed to order things online, because I would probably have just ordered about fifty things from Think Geek. Come on, who wouldn't want a shirt that says "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" or "/(bb|[^b]{2})/" (To be or not to be?) or even "There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't"?
It strikes me that my four main interests make for a slightly strange combination - a Christian computer student who writes poetry and loves Japanese music. Today I finished writing a simple web server in Java, drove home to the accompaniment of The Pillows and Tomokazu Seki, thanking God for such a beautiful day, and came home to watch M*A*S*H and paw through the Writer's Centre newsletter for upcoming fiction and poetry contests. Ah well, c'est l'épice de la vie.
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( 11:09 AM ) Leto
There is one thing that characterises Australian cartoons, one thing that sets them apart, one thing they all have in common - excruciating voice acting. There is always at least one main character, usually a child, who you can't listen to without cringing.
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( 1:55 PM ) Leto
I can't believe some of the rubbish I get in my email. I wrote a sonnet about it (Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave ^_^.), but I could turn it into a whole series of sonnets, there's that much in there that warrants comment. Much of it is very rude, and some is ridiculous - "why look old?" and "receive your ordination online!" and, best of all, "sick of spam"? (Got about twelve of those.) "Never worry about septic tank maintenance again!!" screams one subject line in all caps (how reputable and sophisticated it looks to write in all capitals). Well, that's a relief; I was really losing sleep over our many septic tanks. Can you really trust emails about free mortgage approval, "earn $100,000 a year from home" and cheap prescription medication, from people who misspell words, use caps and multiple exclamation points, and use computer-generated email addresses that bounce your emails back?
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( 8:56 AM ) Leto
The art of finding things funny is a good one to possess, but it has its drawbacks. Occasionally something completely random and completely unfunny to anyone else just hits my funny bone - and I can't stop laughing, five, ten minutes after everyone else has stopped. This generally happens in inappropriate situations. ^_^.
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( 8:19 PM ) Leto
March is local Millipede Month. Let's all join together in celebration with a stomping, jumping dance. These creatures are so slow; it seems they are just all stuck in place on the walls, on the floors, on the steps. There are literally hundreds outside our front door and dozens more outside the other doors - and don't worry, they'll all find their way in and distribute themselves evenly throughout the house. I've seen them in the toilets, sinks, showers. More than once I have found a millipede sitting happily on the bristles of my toothbrush.
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