New Poll

I was so bored that I didn't make a new poll last week. But I made a new one this week in honor of the new Twilight coming out! Alright, everyone, the question that everyone's been asking: Edward or Jacob!! Since I haven't read the books (and probably none of my voters have either) there will probably not be much insight in this poll, but give it your best shot.

Eclipse

Here's something I didn't know: Edward and Bella weren't together during the second movie. I found this out when Alexie said: "Eclipse is coming out and everyone's freaking out because it has both a werewolf AND a vampire in it."
"Wait!" said I, "You mean Edward wasn't in the second one?"
"Nope."
"He was only in the first one?"
"Weeell, he was in the second one a little bit. But all he did was dump Bella and then have this dream that Bella died and then decide to hook up with her again when it turned out the dream wasn't real. But Jacob was the main guy for pretty much all of it."
Instead of wondering how she knew this I simply marveled at how much I didn't know. Thing I didn't know number 2: Twilight is a tetralogy. Not a trilogy! Wow!

Ending Soon

It seems like I just began this job and it is already winding down to an end. Next week there are two labs and a final. Then it is over. What a serious bummer! In a scant seven days I will be unemployed again. I suppose I'll revive my deceased workout program (It died after twenty-six days.) or I'll check out some more books at the library since I've been doing that a lot recently. What to do...

Library

The library recently reorganized itself making everything hard to find. I was looking in the catalog and the place to find it was "FIC." I kept trying to figure out what it stood for. Since I was so used to "FA" standing for "Fine Arts" I somehow had a firm idea that the "F" standed for "Fine." However after a bit of hmmmming and haaaahing, I realized it stood for "Fiction." Well, duh.

P.S. Alexie, who was once sick and now is better, just told me that FIC was always fiction. Nothing new. Drat.

Demographic Survey

My demographic survey is complete! I have only one human in my entire audience! Who could have guessed! I have mostly elves and orcs (which are technically elves, it is just that they became evil and therefore became hideously ugly. You know, happens all the time in real life.) Surprisingly I don't have any dwarves. Real shocker there. I would think that my brothers were actually dwarves in disguise given their love of everything Dwarf Fortress.

Oh yeah, I'm probably going to take a new tack to polls. I'm going to start using true/false and yes/no questions because I simply don't have as many readers as I have options in Multiple Choice questions.

Consensus

Alright, general consensus states that the word "Carl" has only one syllable in it, but then again general consensus also states that sausages are edible, so you know how much you can trust it.

Also, no one has published a poem containing the word "Carl" in it. For shame. Everyone loses the Poem Contest. I will keep the Grand Prize for myself. It is all mine! I'm not even going to tell any one what it is lest they envy it and seek my life for it! Ha!

Alright. Here's the next poll: If you were a redshirt from Lord of the Rings, what race would you belong to!?!? Man, Elf, Dwarf, Orc.

There are two reasons that "Hobbit" is not a choice. 1) I consider five options to be too many when polling four people. 2) Hobbits generally don't form into armies and get decimated.

Awed

There are just some words that don't work when you are listening to books being read out loud. Mom is currently reading the third Mysterious Benedict Society book out loud and I have noticed a disgusting overuse of the word "awed." For example: "Wow Constance! You are clearly the smartest person ever!" Sticky said with an awed tone. Not only is this word pretty dull and non-descriptive, it is a homonym for the word "odd." Since both words are adjectives, I always have a double take when I hear this word out loud as I try to figure out what they are saying. Are they saying Sticky is impressed or that he is acting suspicious?

Results

I bet you are all wondering why it took so long to get this post up exclaiming the winner of the last poll. It is because all three losers wanted a recount.

Harry: Wait wait wait. Hold on! Count those again!

Jacob: Yeah, I smell a rat!

Edward: You mean I didn't even get one!?

Yes, so after I counted all seven votes four times, I have concluded that Dr. Sligh is the winner! He is the tweeniest idol of all time! Woo hoo!

I'll make a new poll when I think of one.

Tween idols

You know what are hilarious? UTC Echo articles about Twilight. There are a lot of them. For example, one I read had this snappy headline: Cullen challenges Potter. There's a boring headline if ever I saw one. Here's a better one: Who is Hotter? Cullen or Potter? Anyways, the most recent article was titled "Men not immune to Twilight's bite." Pfffft. Ha ha ha ha ha. What a bunch of losers. Don't these undergraduate journalist wannabes have anything better to do with their lives? Anyways, the journalist pretty much wandered around asking guys whether they had read twilight and which one would they rather be: a vampire or a werewolf. Here were some answers:

Dr. Sligh: I would be a vampire simply because there is so much history to be learned. (Alexie is taking this guy's British Literature class next semester. Ha!)

J. Blake: Edward scares me and Jacob is a classy dude. I would want to be Jacob because he is ripped, seems cool and is pretty hardcore. (According to them, neither this guy nor Dr. Sligh have actually read Twilight.)

J. Petty: I would defiantly be a werewolf because I think I look like one already. (This guy was in my Latin class. He doesn't actually look all that wolfish.)

Anyway, newest poll: Which totally tween idol would you be? Edward, Jacob, Harry Potter, or Dr. Sligh?

Ann Coulter

HEY GUYS! GUESS WHAT? ANN COULTER IS COMING TO UTC~!

So I opened my e-mail and there were a bunch of moronic UTC-MEMO's which I promptly selected in order to delete, but there sandwiched between "Job Offer Fair for Freshmen" and "Idiot Frat House Seeks Members" was "Ann Coulter comes to UTC to speak." BLAM-O! I instantly stopped deleting and began reading. Apparently the Women's Studies Dept. (Morons) have invited Ann Coulter to give a speech that will be "critiqued" by two of their professors. I can't wait to go! It's Oct. 5 and IT'S SO EXCITING I GET TO SEE ANN COULTER LIIIIIIIIIIIVE.

I'll probably leave after Ann Coulter stops talking and gives the podium to the idiot professors, but whatever.

P.S. For all you people who don't know what Ann Coulter wrote but probably do know who wrote "To Kill A Mockingbird," (I only found out today. I feel stoopid.) read some of my June posts about her AWESOME POSSUM books, "Godless" and "Guilty." The blog posts are named "Perpuated Falsehoods."

Fictional Grief

Have you ever been watching a movie or reading a book and you start crying when a fictional character dies? Not like a random background character is murdered and the main character has to figure out whodunnit but an actual character like one of Harry Potter's father figures dies and you just begin to weep for the brevity of such a beautiful life. Well, why? It doesn't make much sense to mourn a fictional character. If you never lived, can you really die?

P.S. My brother Luke is the only person I've ever known to weep at the death of a nonfictional character in a book, The Life of Abraham Lincoln. (I won't spoil the ending for you, just in case you haven't read it.) Just saying.

Duncanology

Ta-da! Despite the fact that none of you want to know this much useless information about me, I decided to post it anyway! If you don't already know all this stuff, you're not missing anything. Read on at the expense of a large number of otherwise free-to-learn-interesting-facts-about-life-and-God brain cells.


Food-ology

What is your favorite salad dressing?

Cucumber Ranch. (What a random first question.)

What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?

Ryan's, of course! Although, I don't often go there unless I do something really special like graduate from high school or defeat Lord Voldemort.


What food could you eat for 2 weeks straight and not get sick of it?
Ramen, because I often do eat ramen for 2 weeks straight and I'm still not sick of it.


What are your pizza toppings of choice?

Mmmmm, Papa John's Pepperoni Pizza is so good.


What do you like to put on your toast?

Peanut butter and honey. I have been doing so since time began.


TECHNOLOGY

How many televisions are in your house?

Two.

What color cell phone do you have?

Black, the color of despair.

What does the first text message in your in box say and who sent it?
I don't text. I don't think I even can text.

Who was the last person to call you?
Hello, the law requires us to tell you that this is a debt collection agency...


BIOLOGY

Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right.

Have you ever had anything removed from your body?

My wisdom teeth, I suppose.

What is the last heavy item you lifted?
A bunch of boxes of steak and other meats for Angel Food Ministries.

RANDOM-OLOGY

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?

Sure, why not? Information is power.

If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
If I HAD to change my name due to extenuating circumstances I'd change it to Logan Craft. It dances on the tongue quite nicely.

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Of course I would! Who WOULDN'T!?



DUMB-OLOGY



How many pairs of flip flops do you own?

Whenever Dad buys a new pair of flip-flops I wear it out to the mailbox to get the mail and then he can supposedly never wear them again because I ruined them or something. So he buys another new pair. I own about... Five and a half pairs.

When is the last time you had a run in with the cops?

When I drove through a store window.

Last person you talked to in person?

Dad, asking me whether I came into his room to talk to him or only check the computer.

Favorite Month(s)?

Fall. September-December



CURRENT-OLOGY

Missing someone?
Missing you. I ain't missing you. I ain't missing you at all. Missing you. Missing you. Missing you. No matter what my friends might say~!


Mood?
Braindead. I've been reading all day and that always does a number on me.


What are you listening to?
Someone setting the table for dinner.


Watching?
I'm on the computer, dolt-survey. I'm not watching anything.


Worrying about?
Andrew just frolicked into the room.


RANDOM-OLOGY



Last movie you saw?
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, OH YEH~!


Do you smile often?
Are you kidding? I can't stop! Not even if I just discovered that my fiancee is already cheating on me the night before the wedding!


Do you always answer your phone?
I never answer my phone.


It’s four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it?
Hello, the law requires us to inform you that this is a debt collection agency...


If you could change your eye color what would it be?
I take pride in my beautiful blue eyes.


Do you own a digital camera?
Yes. I haven't used it since last Random Fun, though.


Have you ever had a pet fish?
Yeah, Lexie won it at a carnival but it was dead before it got home.


Favorite Christmas song
Probably Garth Brooks' "Baby Jesus is Born."


What’s on your wish list for your birthday?
I already possess everything I could want.


Can you do pushups?
Yes, I can do approximately 50. (Yeh, it's lame.)


Can you do a chin up?
I can do approximately 5. (Yeh, it's lamer.)


Does the future make you more nervous or excited?
The future excites me. I can't wait for everything I'm preparing for to take effect.


What is the last song to make you cry?
I don't think any song has ever made me cry. The last time I felt sad while listening to a song was the "There Goes My Life" ending. Even though no one died.


Plans tonight?
RUF, BABY! I successfully got Mom to FORCE Lexie into driving me. (P.S. During the whole conversation, Heather refused to drive me because I was being "manic" and "manipulatory.")


Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom?
Yes. I doubt I ever have though. Things could always have gotten worse.


Name three things you bought yesterday.
Pizza for lunch, a ticket to Half-Blood Prince, and uh... a second piece of pizza for lunch (I guess.)


Have you ever been given roses?
I've been given flowers but I can't tell the difference between one flower and the next. They might have been carnations because that's the state flower of Garth McPherson.


Do you have an accent?
Since I live in the South, you could say I have a "General" accent which means I sound like I come Northern Virginia. (or the Midwest.)


Current hate right now?
Being tired.


What were you doing at 12 AM last night?
Listening to bible verses in my sleep. I still can't recite any of them though.

Summer of Forgotten Dreams

Today I woke up and realized I hadn't even started revamping Super Program yet. Darn. There were a lot of things I intended to do while I was here, but it seems that all of them have been forgotten. Mostly I've just been running around doing political stuff interspersed with break time wherein I read political books. I also read political magazines and watch political news. I am so politic'ed up! Yet, I haven't done anything that I wanted to do. For some reason, I'm not that upset about it either. I'll just take it on the chin and dedicate some empty day at home to it.

Shameless Plugs

This is actually a pretty bad time to be watching Fox News since both Beck and O'reilly have come out with new books and really enjoy talking about how well they are doing. Snooze. Go back to the Tiller Murder investigation and the ACORN money-embezzling scandal.

I've recently finished reading Glenn Beck's Common Sense. In it he makes the arguments that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party stand for the American people anymore. He's calling for people to jump ship on both sides and become Independents who vote for people who run for neither party but do represent your values. What's really funny is that while all this is happening is that the Wake Republican Party is running a Turn-All-Independents-Into-Republicans Voter Registration Drive. So we're bumping into all these people who got it into their heads to jump ship and now we're dragging them back. Not working too well.

I appreciate Ann Coulter, who wrote Godless, saying when she was on Beck's show being interviewed about his book that Republicans aren't as bad as Democrats. They're moving towards Democrats but they're not as bad as they are yet. That's a distinction I'm glad she made since otherwise it makes me feel like a dummy working so hard to build up a party that everyone claims is going belly up and should go belly up.

Common Sense, by Glenn Beck

There are two types of political books in this world: Those which motivate you and those which depress you. (Actually three, including those that are just boring, but I don't read those for too long.) Common Sense is the kind that depresses you. Glenn Beck's point, since he is a libertarian, is that the people who wasted their vote in the last Pennsylvania senate race aren't the people who voted third-party, but the people who voted for Arlen Specter and were stabbed in the back. He's got a point there, but it is a very depressing one. The last time Republicans tried a massive shift to a third party we elected Bill Clinton. Beck says that our government is insane for instating socialism because "insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result." Doesn't the same rule apply for swinging over to third parties though? It hasn't worked since before the Civil War. Why are we still trying?

Finished probably

Grandad assigned me to write a speech for a motivational tape that he'll show at neighborhood Republican barbecues to get people to sign up to volunteer. It sounds really important, right? Right. If I did this wrong nobody would sign up to help Grandad and then Grandma will continue to be given the full brunt of Grandad's volunteerism. So this was important. Anyway, essays/speeches are not my cup of tea. I am criminally bad at writing. I ought to get a life sentence for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue. In the end, my speech looked more like a motivational book report for Liberty and Tyranny. (Which was the book my Grandad wanted me to base my speech off of.)

By the way, Liberty and Tyranny is your typical bestseller: Really good stuff, really boring read. Levin, the guy who wrote it, runs a really good radio show. I think he for some reason assumed that unlike radio, books are not for entertainment. So the book is singularly unentertaining but it's really good heady stuff. P.S. Dr. McClay was quoted in it. That's how intellectual it was.

Back onto the subject of the speech. Now I'm just hoping my Grandad doesn't take one look at it and tell me to rewrite it. That would be devestating.

Perpetuated Falsehoods III, Haeckel Strikes Back

Alright, here it is. The final in this exciting trilogy.

3) Haeckel's drawings are baloney.

A relatively obscure but well respected eugenicist named Haeckel (whose other major contribution to science was the assertion that Africans were the ladder rung in between humans and animals) drew a series of pictures of embryos of varying species (human, frog, other vertebrates). He said that since they all looked the same, this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that all vertebrates evolved from one another. As you can see, it is a completely illogical assertion. They all look the same, so what? They're blastulas for crying out loud! They are balls of tissue and balls are all typically round. So what if they look the same?
But wait, it gets better. The drawings were FAKE!!! Human embryos do NOT look like frog embryos! True, they bear slight resemblances including being made of tissue, but their shapes and forms are different. Turns out Haeckel made a woodcut of one embryo and then made several drawings of one woodcut.
Nevertheless, I am still told in Biology class that during the first trimester you can't tell what the embryo is going to grow into. If you are told this immediately interject "Um, that's a lie." I was told this same "tidbit" by three different Biology professors. The fact that I didn't know it was a lie until today makes me sick to my stomach. The fact that it is still being taught in school makes me sicker. Especially since it is often used to devalue human embryo life. OH YOU MISERABLE AND DESPICABLE PEOPLE! YOU SIT ON A THRONE OF LIES!!

Perpeptuated Falsehoods II, the Revenge of the Statist

Alright, I said I would post the other falsehoods. Have another one:



2) The Miller-Urey Experiment is also bunk.



I promise you, you will hear about the Miller-Urey Experiment in your Biology Class. Whoopee! I can synthesize amino acids from gases with nothing but sparks. Even before I read "Godless," I saw the fundamental error in the fact that just because you could make amino acids, doesn't mean you can create life. Coulter pointed that out and then pointed out something I didn't know: The Miller-Urey Experiment assumed the existence of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water. What evolutionary biologists actually say is in primordial air is ozone, hydrogen sulfate, and carbon dioxide along with a couple others that I can't remember. The thing is they listed all the primordial air gases in class and expected you to memorize them BUT they also expected you to know the importance of the Miller-Urey experiment that was based on premises that they had already denounced! The two-facedness is awe-inspiring.

Next time: Perpetuated Falsehood III, Haeckel Strikes Back.

Perpetuated Falsehoods

I've been reading a lot of books in the past two weeks. In fact, I've been reading more here than I do at home. I've been reading this fantastic book by Ann Coulter called "Godless" about the American education system. Guess what? Three of the facts Coulter denounced as lies were taught in my college Biology course. I was taught these as facts, and it turns out they were lies. Good grief. Here they are:

1) The Peppered Moth Experiment was bunk. This was an experiment done in London which stated that when the trees were blackened with pollution, there were more black moths in the air. When London cleaned its air, there were more white moths. This was because white moths showed up clearly against black trees so birds could spot them easier. See? Moths with a certain color are favored over moths with a less favorable color. (As you see, this proves hands down that you can eventually evolve a gecko into a German Shepherd.) As it turns out, peppered moths do not rest on trees and are not hunted by birds. They fly at night when birds are asleep and they rest on the underside of branches. Turns out the famous pictures that are touted by every biology textbook (including the one I sold to Megan) that show how distinctly a white moth stands out against black bark were staged by gluing dead moths to a tree. Peppered moths would never rest on bark of their own volition. I promise you, unless you have a really awesome nonliberal Biology teacher, you will hear the story of the peppered moths.

For more information on this subject, check out the article "The Moth That Failed," by Paul Raeburn published in the NEW YORK TIMES!!! on August 25, 2002. See also Nicholas Wade's "Staple of Evolutionary Teaching May Not Be Textbook Case" also in the New York Times, but on June 18, 2002.

Just a warning, when even the New York Times doesn't perpetuate liberal falsehood, there is something really wrong going on.

I mentioned three lies, I'll give you the other in a later blog post.

French, the Language of Couchant.

(I might have to change the title if I find out that is not how you spell the French word for pig.)

My mother is reading a new book to the children called "The Avion my Uncle Flew," wherein nothing of any interest happens except for a couple Nazi encounters and French people speak like pigs.

I don't mean about pigs: I mean like pigs. Here's what I mean: Every French person in this book knows approximately one word and repeats it constantly. For example, this mayor dude is constantly either waving his arms and shouting or pointing at our main character and saying "Assassin! Assassin! Assassin!" He's like a pokemon or something. Then there's a little friend of the main character who has two modes of talking: "talking really rapidly in French" and "Vit! Vit! Vit!" repeatedly. Every now and then she kicks the mayor in the shins which is entertaining enough. When the "Oncle" (Hey hey hey! That means Uncle in French!) attempts to explain that his nephew is not an "Assassin! Assassin!" to the mayor, he repeats the French word for bread over and over. The reason for this is that he is trying to explain to the mayor that the gun his nephew is holding was found in a loaf of bread. So the conversation looks like this:

Mayor: Assassin! Assassin!

Oncle: Bread! Bread! Bread!

Mayor: *thinking "That is not bread you retard, that is a gun!"* Assassin! Assassin!

Oncle: Bread! Bread! Bread!

I don't spend too much time listening to this book.