Roseyland

Flickr : John-Morgan

Do you see this picture of a cute animal known as a squirrel? They are evil. There is this tree that towers over my bedroom, and currently the tree is producing massive amounts of acorns. The squirrels are delighting in running through the tree and knocking the acorns onto the roof above my bedroom. The other night it was so loud the cat and I had to search the condo at 3am to ensure no one had broken in. The next day, I was watching the squirrels in the tree, and I swear one of them threw an acorn at me. I used to like squirrels. I used to think they were cute. Now I know the truth, they are evil, and they are out to torment me.

I always have trouble coming up with Christmas gift ideas for myself. What can I say? I have everything I need. Well, at least I thought I did, until I came across this Facebook fan page. This year for Christmas, I want high speed rail service between St. Louis and Chicago. By high speed, I mean 220 mph with a two hour trip time. No need to wrap it. You can find more information at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association page.

I’ve be a fan of all forms of rail transportation for a long time. I love big cities where you can take the subway/metro/L/tube anywhere. Few things would make me happier than being able to take the Metrolink to work. I also recently took a train from London to Paris. You might have read about it here. It was awesome. So much better than an airplane for regional travel.

A great annoyance of mine is that Chicago is so close, yet so far away. It’s a 5 hour drive, which is just a little too long, plus traffic and parking in Chicago is hell. Chicago is only a 1 hour flight, but you have to leave for the airport 2 hours ahead of time, then fly in a cramped airplane, then wait for your luggage, and then take a 45 minute taxi or L ride downtown. Door to door, traveling from St. Louis to Chicago by air takes about 4 hours. Boooooo!

A train to Chicago would be perfect. You would only have to leave for the train station 1 hour (at most) before the departure time, the trip would take 2 hours, and since your luggage stays with you and the train takes you right downtown, once you are there, you are there. A three hour trip. Okay, so I might have idealized the situation a little bit, but even if the train isn’t that fast, the experience of riding a train is so much better. You can get up and walk around, the food is better, the food selection is better, the view is better. Dude, the train is awesome.

Okay, so now you know what I want for Christmas. I don’t ask much of you, so please just get me what I want this year, okay? Also, I’ll be needing a gift idea from you. I’m not psychic you know.

This is weird, I’m blogging from a coffee shop. Kayak’s Coffee house at Skinker & Forest Park Parkway to be exact. There are people all around me. I’m not used to having people around me when I write. I’m pretty sure they are all watching me and judging me. Somebody just laughed. I think it’s because she read that sentence I just wrote about people watching me. How can she tell what I’m writing from the other side of the coffee shop? She must have super powers. I should probably only write nice things about her.

I have a problem with coffee houses on warm days. I always want an iced tea when it’s warm, but you can’t order an iced tea at a coffee house. I mean you can, but they don’t just have tea, they have like 10 different kinds of speciality teas. I don’t want any of that crap, I want plain old black iced tea in at least a 32 ounce container. I ordered an iced tea today and I got 16 ounces of some type of green tea citrus something. It sucks. I don’t think it has any caffeine in it. What’s the point of iced tea without caffeine?

Hey, this blogging in public thing is going okay. I don’t think the other coffee house patrons are judging me as much anymore. It must be because my writing is so awesome. Thanks guys. I wish I could take a picture, but there are these three college girls right in my line of view. I don’t want them to think that I’m taking their picture. It would suck to be that guy. You should really come by Kayak’s sometime and see it though. It’s very cool, it has a mountain log cabin feeling to it, and they have Tibetan prayer flags hanging from the ceiling. I love me some Tibetan prayer flags. They also used to serve s’mores. I don’t know if they still do though, I can’t see them on the menu. I wish Kayak’s had existed when I was at WashU, I probably would have spent a lot of time here doing homework with a couple other guys.

Last night was a good night. Nebraska beat Oklahoma in college football and health care reform passed in the house. I’m kind of embarrassed, because I though Oklahoma had only lost to Texas and was ranked in the top 10. Apparently they had lost three times and were actually ranked like 20th. So while it was nice to see Nebraska beat a ranked team and their only true rival (sorry Missouri & Colorado), it isn’t as big of a deal as I thought it was. Health care passing in the house was nice too. No, the bill isn’t perfect, and there is still a long ways to go before this whole ordeal is over, but this is the most progress we’ve ever made, so that’s good. I spent a lot of time switching between college football and C-SPAN last night. Never done that before.

Okay, I’m out of food and drink. I’m not sure what the unwritten coffee house rules are, but doesn’t some bouncer come and throw you out when you are done with your food and/or drink? No? Hmm… Well I’m tired of sitting here anyways. Only 22 post left. I’m over half way through being half way through. Hurray!

A while ago, I tried to learn French. I failed. Mostly because French is hard, but also because it requires more than a 2 week commitment. In the process of trying to learn French, I looked for several easy ways out. I figured that if I listened to French music and watched French TV shows, maybe I would learn French by osmosis, or immersion, or something like that. It didn’t work, but I did find some fascinating French YouTube videos. Today, I’m going to share three of them with you. Lucky lucky you.

First up is Yelle. Yelle is a French electropop singer. I can’t say that I’m really into “electropop”, but Yelle’s music is strangely entrancing. Here is a video of Yelle singing Je Veux Te Voir (I Want To See You) at the Knitting Factory in NYC. People often ask how the French stay so thin. Judging from this video, I think it’s because they jump a lot. FYI, the lyrics to this song are pretty dirty, but you’ll never know, unless you speak French or click on that lyrics link I just provided.

Along with Yelle, I found Alizée. Alizée is a more traditional pop singer. Her music isn’t as strangely addicting as Yelle’s, but it’s very pretty and soothing. It sounds so French. Perhaps because it’s in French. Also, Alizée is beautiful. She is what I would describe as girlfriend hot. She’s attractive, but she still has the illusion of attainability. Attainability is hot. Anyways, here is a video of Alizée singing J’en ai Marre (I’m fed up). You can view the translated lyrics here. One weird thing about French, even after you translate it into English, it still doesn’t make much sense.

Finally, a cute little French girl telling a fairy tale. I’m not usually a fan of cute kids doing cute things, but if they are speaking French, well, not even I can resist. One great thing about this video is that it has english subtitles. I now know how to say hippopotamus, giraffe, and crocodile in French. Woo Hoo! Now if only I could find a video of cats speaking French, that would be awesome.

That is all, I have Husker football to watch. See you tomorrow.

I love Google Earth and Google Street View. You can pretty much walk the streets of any city in the World without leaving your couch. The more I can do from my couch the better. Today, I’m going to take you on a tour of everywhere I have lived via Google Earth. Yes, I know there are addresses on these pictures, but nobody I know lives in these places today, so stalk away.

As far as I know, this is the first place I ever lived. It’s a condo in Lincoln, Nebraska. My Dad actually lived here until just a few months ago, and I have spent many summers and holiday breaks in this condo.

My parents got divorced when I was three or four. For awhile, I lived with my Mom in an apartment, but I have no idea where that was. Then, when I was in kindergarten, we lived in this house. I’m amazed I was able to find it, but it was actually fairly easy. I remember that my aunt lived in the basement of this house for some time. She would tell me ghost stories about a ghost named VooDoo, and then I would have nightmares.

My Mom remarried when I was 5, and my Mom, Stepdad, and I lived in this house when I was in first grade. I remember that it was near a drive-in movie. I could see movies from my front yard. I couldn’t hear them, but I could see them.

After first grade, we moved to Edmond, Oklahoma. We lived in the duplex apartment with the red car in front of it. This was a semi-fun place to live. I spent a lot of time riding my bike and playing in the wooded area towards the bottom-left of the picture. I remember catching horny toads and playing in red dirt. Oklahoma had lots of red dirt. I also remember the people in Oklahoma being a little weird. I personally don’t think I’d ever live there again.

Then in third grade, we moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, where we lived in this apartment complex for the first year. This was awesome for a kid. This neighborhood was called the Ridges, and it was very hilly and rocky. I used to climb on these rocks a lot. I scrapped many knees here. There were also lots of cactuses, and I put my hand in several of them.

In fourth grade, we moved to this house in Grand Junction, Colorado. This is where I lived until I left for college. There were not as many plants in front of the house when I lived here, but the rock yard was there. The Colorado river was near by and I used to ride my bike down there all the time. I also played a lot of Nintendo in this house.

After high school, I went to Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. I lived in the Freese hall my freshman and sophomore years, which is the dorm on the left. Freese was a co-ed dorm and Doane had a beautiful campus. Notice the lake and trees. It’s pretty.

During my junior and senior years, I lived in Colonial Hall with seven other guys from my fraternity. Colonial was made up of quads, which are four dorm rooms with a shared living and bathroom. Good times. I wish I could say more, but I’d rather leave some things undocumented. Right now my quad-mates are thinking, “Like what? the time you stayed in to do homework when we went to the bar?”. Yes, exactly. Nobody needs to know these things.

After Doane, I got my engineering degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I was at WashU for three semesters, and I lived in the Millbrook apartments during this time. I did a lot of studying here. Not much else.

After WashU, I went to grad school at the University of Nebraska. So we’ve come full circle back to Lincoln, Nebraska. This is the apartment complex I lived in. I had a studio apartment, which was small, but suited me well. I get a kick out of the efficient use of space.

After grad school, I moved to St. Louis, Missouri and lived in this apartment complex. These apartments were nice, but I got tired of paying rent, so I bought a condo and moved out.

This is the neighborhood I live in today. I can’t show you my actual condo, because you’d probably stalk me and eat my brains. Not cool.

Well that was fun, it’s amazing how fast that went by. It’s like my life just flashed before my eyes. Am I dead? Nope, still here, few! If you liked this post, you might also like this post with various pictures of me over the ages. See you tomorrow for another fun filled NaBloPoMo post!

Here at Roseyland we pride ourselves on being a bastion of high brow intellectual discourse. Tonight we will be engaging in a thinking game colloquially referred to as Kill Fuck Marry. (No, that isn’t an appropriate use of the word colloquially, but it felt right, deal with it). This is where you are given a list of three people and you have to choose one to kill, one to fuck, and one to marry. Tonight’s lists of killing, fucking, or marrying candidates are brought to us by Matt of Doane College and Delta Kappa Pi fame. Matt was nice enough to propose this game in a comment to my last blog post. Let’s begin!

A). Marisa Miller, Heidi Klum, Jessica Biel

Okay, look. I don’t read People, or US Weekly, or watch TMZ. I’m also horrible at names and faces. Who in the hell is Marisa Miller? Let me do a Google image search… Oh dear god. Wow. Good for her. This (possibly NSFW) is nice. And this. And this. Yeah, um, I’m gonna fuck her.

So that leaves Heidi Klum and Jessica Biel. I know Heidi because she a judge on that runway show that has nothing to do with airplanes. She’s quite fit as well. (Psssst… “fit” is British for looks fuckable. You may now consider yourself cultured). I know that I know Jessica Biel, but I can’t seem to bring up her image in my mind. Let’s do another Google image search… Jessica’s nice, but not my thing. I’ll kill her and marry Heidi. I think I’d enjoy the German efficiency Heidi would bring to our union.

Next List.

B). Lady GaGa, Kathy Griffin, Scary Spice

I think I preferred the last list, can we just do it again? No? All-right. I’m actually somewhat of a Kathy Griffin fan. I love here Life on the D List show on Bravo. I also like Lady GaGa’s song Just Dance. It’s a good song to get you going on the way to work in the morning. I don’t know much about Scary Spice, but I do remember the Spice Girls.

I’m going to marry Kathy. An odd choice given that she’s the oldest of the three, but she’s funny and I think it would be cool to hang out with her on a daily basis. Plus her last husband was kind of a dick, so she deserves a good guy like me. I’m going to kill Lady Gaga and fuck Scary Spice. Lady Gaga just seems a little out of control. I don’t do out of control. Supposedly Scary Spice was named “Scary” because she has a take charge up front personality. That could make for a unique bedroom experience. I’d like to try it out.

Next List.

C). Rosie O’Donnell, Barbara Streisand, Amy Winehouse

I have to kill Rosie. I actually like Rosie when she doesn’t let her mouth get too far ahead of her brain, but that never last very long. My biggest issue with Rosie is this. I’ll spare you the gory details, but basically Rosie did her own little expert structural engineering analysis and determined that the U.S. government must have been responsible for 9-11. I don’t do crazy, so I’m afraid Rosie has to go.

Every time I see Amy Winehouse, I think she’s a drag queen. An attractive drag queen, but still a drag queen. Also, isn’t she some type of raging drug addict? Or has she recovered? Either way, I can’t marry her. I could fuck her though, so I will. I guess that means I’m marrying Barbara. She older, but super rich. I can deal with that.

Well that was fun. Feel free to critique my selections. Remember, we are all about intelligent discourse here at Roseyland. Also, I should warn you, this blog post uses the word “fuck” a lot. This is out of character for me, but the nature of the game Kill Fuck Marry makes it necessary. If such language offends you, please don’t read this post.

This post is kind of a cop out, but if I”m going to stick with this NaBloPoMo thing, I’m going to have to take the easy way out a few times. Since starting NaBloPoMo (a whole 3 days ago), I’ve been frantically trying to think of things to blog about. In my first year of blogging, I wrote 64 post. In the next 26 days, I have to write 26 post. That’s a 571.875% increase in my posting rate. I know what you are thinking. Isn’t it a 570.3125% increase? No! you are forgetting that 2008 was a leap year. Silly you. Anyways, here is my list of ideas so far:

• Conversations with Nate Dogg
• The Ramblings of a Mad Man
• Earl and the Ninja Duck (A Children’s Story)
• The History of Earl (Cat Pictures)
• Everywhere I have lived via Google Street View
• Self Driving Cars and Virtual Bubbles
• Staying Positive Amidst all the Crazy
• My Obsession Love Fondness of Lily Allen
• The Self Aware Universe
• Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Book Review)
• Commentary on some random news article of the day
• Christmas in London
• Teleportation Thought Experiment
• Countries I Would Add to Epcot
• The Wine Cube
• Remodeling my Bathroom
• Tour of My Condo
• Places I’d like to go
• NaBloPoMo - Looking Back (My last NaBloPoMo post)
• ???

That is 19 potential posts. I need 7 more. Any ideas? Anything on the list you like? don’t like? Leave a comment. I love comments.

See that guy on the right? That’s my senior year college roommate John. The guy on the left is his gay partner/lover Rob. If you look close, you can see that they are wearing nothing but body paint, man panties, and shoes. They are dressed up (or down) as corn for Halloween. I assume they went with corn because they are both from Nebraska. There is a lot of corn in Nebraska. Their dog, Chi, is dressed up as a pumpkin. In the picture below, you can see Chi dressed up as a purple monkey. It looks like Chi got two costumes this year. Lucky dog.

The next picture is John and Rob’s refrigerator in preparation for Market Days. Market days is this gay and lesbian street festival in Chicago. Apparently it’s a big deal. Notice the obscene amount of gay pride themed jello shots.

So why are we here? I don’t know. Somehow I saw that picture of John painted as gay corn on the cob, and I just had to blog about it. John is one of my favorite people in the world. I lived with him and four other guys for two years in college. We all pledged to the same fraternity as freshman, and it has been good times ever since. All of these guys are a million times more interesting than me, but John is particularly interesting, because he’s gay. Well not just because he’s gay, but also because he was a huge republican in college. He worked on republican candidates campaigns, he went to the Republican National Convention in 1996, and he screamed with girlish glee when he found out that Bill Clinton put a cigar in Monica Lewinsky’s vagina. That probably should have been our first clue.

John was also student body president for two years and president of the young republicans for 3 years (I think). We used to debate politics a lot in our quad. John was always the staunch republican. To be fair, John was never a fan of the religious right. We both shared a deep distaste for Pat Robertson and his ilk. I guess what I’m trying to say is that John being a super republican in college makes it all the more wonderful that he is now a gay man living an all out gay lifestyle in Chicago.

I wish I could tell you about the time that John got drunk, threw a pear against the wall, stripped naked, put on a life vest, and tried to strangle me over a can of mandarin oranges, but I promised not to blog about things that could get people arrested. So there you have it, the abbreviated story of my gay republican college roommate John. I’d like to thank John and Rob for letting me post this and use their pictures. You guys are awesome. I’ll come visit someday.

I have a thing for documentaries, and possibly my favorite documentary ever is Jesus Camp. Jesus Camp follows the lives of a group of children from evangelical christian homes. A lot of the documentary focuses on a summer “Jesus” camp the children attend.

I’ve always been fascinated by evangelical religion. Not being that religious myself, evangelical religion is very foreign to me. I like to think that I can always understand another person’s perspective and why they feel the way they do, but evangelicals are a tough nut to crack. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll all about the importance of community, and incorporating some sense of spirituality into your life, but I don’t get blind faith. I can’t shut off the logical/rational side of my brain. I need my beliefs to be compatible with factual reality.

I could ramble on about evangelical religion forever, but we don’t have time for that. In this post, I want to focus on my favorite scene from Jesus Camp. This scene isn’t even in the movie, it’s a deleted scene, and it’s awesome. Check it out:

Let’s recap what we just saw. The leaders of the camp have called a meeting to discuss contingency plans in the event that any of the children become possessed by demons. I imagine if you are running a summer camp, you have to have a lot of back-up plans. You know, things like what to do if it rains, what if one of the kids gets sick, oh, and also, what if the children become possessed by demons. Because you know, that could happen. I think what I love most about this clip is the way nobody is surprised when the head pastor announces that they will probably have to deal with “demonic manifestation”. It looks like there are about 15-20 people in that room. You would think at least one person would be like “wait, wait, this is a joke right?”, but no, they all act like this is a completely normal meeting. Given that nobody thinks this is a joke though, why aren’t they more freaked out? I mean if I believed in demonic possession, and someone told me it was likely to happen, I’d probably lose my cool a little. Aren’t demons supposed to be fallen angels who follow Satan? That sounds bad.

Another thing I want to point out in this scene is the description of a demonically possessed child. In the words of “Uncle Leon”, a demonically possessed child might be “a child doing funny things with their hands or whatever”. Dude, demonically possessed children are EVERYWHERE! It’s an epidemic worse than the swine flu, from now on, I’m throwing holy water on every child I see. Better safe than sorry.

I’m going to leave you with one more scene from Jesus Camp. I’ll let it go without comment, because well, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

As I write this, it is November 1st, 2009 at 6:31 PM, and I have just now decided to participate in NaPaBloMo. This is where you blog every day for the month of November. I haven’t been blogging lately. No real reason, except that I was just plain burned out. I loved the blog post I wrote about my London/Paris trip this summer. It was a great way to document my trip, and I actually go back and read those post a lot. Which is weird, because I wrote them. Unfortunately, with all the pictures and everything I wanted to say, those post wore me out.

I’ll be honest, I’m probably going to fail at this blogging every day thing. For one, I know that I’m going to be out of town for Thanksgiving, and I might not even have internet access. Can you write blog post ahead of time for NaPaBloMo? Or, can you write a blog post everyday, but not post it until a few days later? Which would be more ethical? Maybe I should just stay home with the cat for Thanksgiving.

Three paragraphs into my fist NaPaBloMo post I guess I should finally get to the topic of the post. V. This Tuesday, November 3ed, the new ABC series V starts. In case you don’t know, this is a remake of the original V mini series that aired in 1983, when I was in second grade. I loved V. I wanted to be one of the aliens. I wanted to wear a red jump suit, eat mice, and peel off my face to reveal my true lizard self. I frequently told people I was an alien, and I would draw lizard scales onto my skin using magic markers. Man, those were the days. The Scfy channel has been running a marathon of the original series today, and I have watched a lot of it. For some reason, it doesn’t hold the attraction for me that it once did. I guess it’s possible that I have changed since 1983. I mean I haven’t tried peel my face off in ages.

I do plan on watching the new V series on ABC. I’m not sure if I will like it or not. The previews look decent, but I’m really not much of a Sci-Fi fan. Still, the blond chick in it looks hot. I’ll route for whatever side she is on.

Hey! I made it past day one of NaPaBloMo!!! Only 29 or 30 days left. No, I don’t know how many days are in November. It’s probably 30, since October and December both have 31 days. Okay, so I guess I do know. Never mind. See you tomorrow.