1. New Grange, Ireland
circa 3100 – 2900 BCE
2. Monte Alban
500 BCE
3. Great Wall of China
5th century BCE
4. Roman Colosseum
70-72 CE
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July 10, 2010Autobiographical
I wasn’t reading a lot.. and now I am. It’s bringing up a lot of un-read book guilt and this is what it looks like. I am nearly done with Perelandra by C.S. Lewis after reading a whole lot of it on the plane back from California this evening and so I know decision-making time is nigh.
These are my upcoming book options (alphabetical by author):
How the Irish Saved Civilization – Thomas Cahill
Book 5 of the 39 Clues – Patrick Carman
Foyle’s Philavery – Christopher Foyle
The Ode Less Travelled – Stephen Fry
The Human Voice – Anna Karpf
That Hideous Strength- C.S. Lewis (3rd book in the Space Trilogy of which Perelandra is the 2nd)
Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
Carpe Diem – Harry Mount
Empires of the Word – Nicholas Ostler
The Language Instinct – Stephen Pinker
The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
The Linguistics of Lying – Harald Weinrich
I don’t actually have access to three of these books right now, but I have so many I should have already read, this should not be an issue. I think I’m on a fiction kick and so many of these are not that… the poor non-fiction books are gathering dust.
WHAT TO DO.
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April 26, 2010
Every day when I look at the glowing red sign at the front of the bus I think, “If there was an extra ‘e’ on that sign, that would anagram to ‘Sequestered Pot.'”
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April 16, 20101. March 3rd, 2009: A mysterious package arrived in my kitchen, turns out it was a carrier for EPIC PANDA also known as SUPERLATIVE PANDA!!
2. May 9th, 2009: I went to China. I held a panda. You didn’t. Deal with it.
3. July 25th, 2009: Marble gave me a panda necklace for my birthday. It has heart feet like Propaganda Panda does.
4. August 5th: Yun Zi born at San Diego Zoo. Thus creating endless pandacam footage I would not shut up about.
5. September 6th, 2009: I bought a ridiculous panda hat/scarf/gloves combo at PAX, a birthday present from Ty. As long as I don’t look in a mirror, I’m happy. I love everything about it.
5. December 25th, 2009: Ty visited San Diego and brought back 2 panda souvenirs for me. One, a child’s panda face mask, and the second a framed picture of EPIC PANDA in the wild, before he came to stay with me. Both from the zoo, both fantastic.
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January 2, 2010These are not necessarily albums created in 2009, but ones I found and heard and loved.
4. Paul and Storm
They opened up for Jonathan Coulton at PAX, and they won over the whole audience there, myself included. My favorite must be Live, their Coulton-esque reanimation love song, but their parodies are pretty spectacular. (See Domino’s, Pillsbury and Cheetos jingles, as well as Bob Dylan in a well, and James Taylor on fire on their website here) I’ve been listening their podcast “Paul and Storm Talk about Some Stuff for Five to Ten Minutes on Average” which runs 20-40 minutes. It’s cute, because they are internet almost famous but they need a little bit of editing. I joined their brigade of minions, so that is something that might be fun and or useful eventually.
[and then suddenly…]
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January 2, 20101. Twitter
I don’t advocate anyone’s use of Twitter but my own. For me, it’s the perfect combination of ‘things I need to say outloud for the record’ and ‘things I don’t want to bother a specific person about’ without the vulnerability of Facebook where everyone from my entire life can see my most recent anxiety attack or third-panda-plural admonishment of myself. 
2. Kingdom of Loathing
Resham told me about this pun-filled online game. It’s pretty stupid, but it’s funny enough that you don’t mind having to spend all of your adventures trying to level up, because you can drink alcohol and gain a lot of them back. It was a good way to pass the time. I think I had the most fun naming my familiars: 
(Polaris Bear the Star Starfish being the best.)
So now i’m a level 16 Accordian Thief and there’s some greater thing that I could do, but I think I’m done with it.
3. F My Life
My brother sent me this link the day after a breakup, and it felt so good to be surrounded by misery. Nowadays when I go to the site, it is more of a cringing awkward painful experience, everybody going through so much unholy disgusting trauma, but it’s still a better site than GivesMeHope which drowns me in its sappiness.
4. Nerd Boyfriend
Famous smart nerdy guys and the clothes they wore. Some of them are particularly inspired. Makes you think of famous people as normal people, but also eccentric in their fashion choices, or just clearly from another era.
5. Wordnik
I need to loiter around this site a little more, but I have high hopes for it as a progressive innovative online dictionary, because Erin McKean is involved in it, and she wore a dress at TED that I wish I owned, and I wrote to her and she emailed me back. TWICE.
6. The Sartorialist
I wish I was consistently fashionable and lived in a city where this photographer would go. I am so jealous of nearly everyone on this site, they look so awesome like they are going somewhere important, but they did not know at the beginning of the day that this photoshoot might happen. 
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January 1, 2010(At first I wrote TV Shoes.)
Most of these are here because of Hulu, so thank you, Hulu.
1. Glee
I thought it would be too hokey, but in the first episode, when Finn is sad, they use an a capella requiem quietly as transition between several scenes while Mr. Shoe (Schu?) considers quitting to become an accountant. And then Bust Your Windows happened, and they keep catching me off-guard with song choices in a really spectacular way. Also there is some terrible melodrama blah blah sing another song please. [and then suddenly…]
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December 31, 2009They were not made in 2009, but they made my year.
3. I Could Never Be Your Woman ( 2007)
I swear to God, I only watched this movie because David Mitchell has a cameo. It’s a fine cameo, but it’s a more than decent movie surrounding his bit part. In the best scene ever, Paul Rudd DANCES. He does not stop, he does not limit your enjoyment to one silly move. He COMMITS and he DANCES DAMMIT. The supporting cast is fun, doing a farce of a high school mini drama, the daughter says naughty grown-up things, and the least fun person in the movie in Michelle Pfeiffer. It is one of the few romcoms I think I’ll ever approve of. Well done, you fun stupid movie. [and then suddenly…]
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December 31, 2009CHINA!
I went to China for 2 weeks, which is weird. We hopped around cities in a loop in and out of the country: Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Longsheng, Shanghai
You can find a brief photoset on Flickr
Also. I hugged a panda and scratched his ear and was not arrested and now we are pen pals. Here for my embarrassment and your viewing pleasure:
It was pretty great, and I have a necklace and bracelet and earrings and communist poster and book and mushroom cloud pin and greater understanding of that giant country.
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December 31, 20091. My dad is dying of lung cancer in California and he is a good person and I am in Portland and I should be helping them everyday.
2. My house is unsanitary to the point that I avoid the kitchen and bathroom except when 100% unavoidable.
3. My boyfriend’s iPhone software was pirated, meaning he lost revenue, got his hopes up only to be crushed, and now our budget is limited.
4. Both of my parents weigh less than I do. My dad because of his constant nausea and my mother because of her vigilance in going to the gym during times of crisis.
5. My acne is getting more persistent and worse. I can’t stop touching my face and I don’t think I can. I was going to bring ProActive up from California but I only had carry-on bags and those are liquids.
Resolutions to problems:
1. Cry, visit often, talk to my mom more often, edit dad’s book.
2. Move to new house in January when I come back from Christmas with family.
3. Get a raise at work, create an actual budget for us for food, brainstorm ideas for a new program he could write/ new project.
4. Use boyfriend’s apartment’s gym for eliptical trainer, do crunches whenever possible, stretch everyday at least once. Work out with boyfriend for support.
5. Use ProActive in California and bring it up when I come back in big checked suitcase.
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December 7, 2008