<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!-- If you are running a bot please visit this policy page outlining rules you must respect. http://www.livejournal.com/bots/ --><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:lj="http://www.livejournal.com"> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian</id> <title>Ted</title> <subtitle>Ted</subtitle> <author> <name>Ted</name> </author> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <updated>2010-02-24T06:24:36Z</updated> <lj:journal type="personal" userid="29577" username="merovingian"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom" rel="service.feed" title="Ted" type="application/x.atom+xml"/> <link href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" rel="hub"/> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:373586</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/373586.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=373586" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Onomatotopia, where every word sounds exactly as it should</title> <published>2010-02-24T06:24:36Z</published> <updated>2010-02-24T06:24:36Z</updated> <content type="html">I started last week by trying to recycle other peoples' old half-finished arts and crafts projects. I collected peoples' projects, that they'd been meaning to finish and never got around to. And I meshed them together into something that didn't complete any one individual project, but wrapped them all up together so there was nothing incomplete. I made them all into this one grand city of ideas, crafted together in a little urban park grove back behind my apartment. It really seems to capture the chaos of thousands of intentions stacked on top of one another.<br /><br />I liked it so much that this week, I am collecting peoples' unfinished writing and stories, and lumping them together into a grand conjoined narrative. All those unfinished first paragraphs gathering cobwebs on peoples' hard drives, but I'm stringing them along with hundreds of different styles and clever turns of phrase and settings and premises, and I'm hoping to swirl them together into one grand sweeping chorus and put it all to music -- a grand opera of everyone's best undeveloped ideas.<br /><br />If it goes well, then next week I'm going to do the same thing, but with people's abandoned and incomplete life plans.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:373448</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/373448.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=373448" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Contrast</title> <published>2010-02-18T20:09:31Z</published> <updated>2010-02-18T20:09:44Z</updated> <content type="html">So today I was in for some food that was much more simple than yesterday's thousand-cheese pizza. I ordered a simple lettuce salad with Ten Island dressing, which they billed as a "much simpler version of Thousand Island." The dressing has only one ingredient, which is described as "Natural Flavorings."<br /><br />I'm beginning to think that this restaurant makes everything out of Velveeta and just tinkers with powers of ten afterwards.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:373241</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/373241.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=373241" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>I don't know how to say this nicely...</title> <published>2010-02-17T21:55:19Z</published> <updated>2010-02-17T21:55:19Z</updated> <content type="html">So I finally tried the thousand-cheese pizza that people keep talking about. I like the way they included a magnifying glass so you could read the list of ingredients. I counted the number of cheeses and there are actually 1006 distinct types of cheese. That's more than I knew existed. I respect that collecting and blending all those different cheeses must require very considerable effort and expense, and honestly I don't begrudge the pizza place the high cost of that pizza.<br /><br />What's more, I fully admit that the pizza was perfectly tasty...<br /><br />But.... <br /><br />...did anyone else who ate it stop to think that it pretty much tastes like Velveeta?</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:372884</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/372884.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=372884" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2010-02-16T01:18:00</title> <published>2010-02-16T09:18:13Z</published> <updated>2010-02-16T09:18:13Z</updated> <content type="html">I clicked on the button on LJ that says "Be charming and witty for me while I am away" but somehow I don't see the updates from it. It's unfair that I still have to write my journal manually.<br /><br />There's something about a checkbox that makes you think you can fix it by checking and unchecking it over and over again like maybe somehow it is stuck.<br /><br />I met someone in the elevator this weekend who asked me out of the blue if I was the writer of this LJ. Sir, if you're out there, ah, do you know how to make this button work?</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:372697</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/372697.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=372697" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2010-02-11T19:05:00</title> <published>2010-02-12T03:05:41Z</published> <updated>2010-02-12T03:05:41Z</updated> <content type="html">After all of these decades, we finally broke the impasse and came to a compromise. The cast and crew of <b><u>The Outer Limits</u></b> controls the horizontal, but I get to keep control of the vertical.<br /><br />So, you know, things are not too bad.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:372464</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/372464.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=372464" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Art Cars</title> <published>2010-02-01T01:24:11Z</published> <updated>2010-02-01T01:34:12Z</updated> <content type="html">Art cars. You know the ones I mean: the highly decorated cars you see on the road, or around the neighborhood if you live in a hipster district. Maybe it's a car decorated to look like a shark, or covered with Fischer-Price toys, or a scale replica of a Goliath beetle that's constructing a clockwork time machine. You know the ones I mean.<br /><br /><a name="cutid1"></a>There aren't enough superstitions about them. I hope to help with that.<br /><br />1. If you break into an art car, you will have bad luck for one year, and bad taste in music for the rest of your life.<br />2. If you eat ice cream in an art car, that ice cream will lose its innocence.<br />3. After all the people leave Burning Man, the art cars remain, wandering lonely, wondering why the desert is suddenly so empty.<br />4. If you're stuck in traffic behind an art car on your way to work, you will soon lose your job and get a new one. Depending on how much you like your current job, this may be a blessing or a curse.<br />5. If a librarian drives an art car, you can attain enlightenment just by talking with him or her.<br />6. If you get into a car accident with an art car, no matter how large or small, you won't have any dreams for a week.<br />7. If two art cars collide, the drivers exchange destinies.<br />8. Dogs and cats cannot smell art cars.<br />9. Art cars can cure warts and hiccups, but no one is sure how.<br />10. Every minute you sit in an art car as a passenger, all your enemies spend three minutes in an elevator.<br />11. If you make a VW bug into an art car, it will come to life, and also never forgive you.<br /><br />And that is how the pecan pie turned into a blender.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:372212</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/372212.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=372212" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>It's a rough night in San Francisco</title> <published>2010-01-30T08:10:41Z</published> <updated>2010-01-30T08:10:41Z</updated> <content type="html">I've been hearing and seeing sirens all night long in this crazy town.<br /><br />A lot of sailors must be following to their doom about now.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:371914</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/371914.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=371914" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>The Database</title> <published>2010-01-29T08:31:48Z</published> <updated>2010-01-29T08:31:48Z</updated> <content type="html">"No no no," said the cat, "I assure you that my interest in mice is not food-related. I'm an indoor cat. I eat cat food. Still, I have this fascination with mice that is probably instinctual, but I take it in a new direction. My goal is to identify, name and catalog all the world's mice. And that's why I learned to talk."</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:371259</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/371259.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=371259" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>the piano</title> <published>2010-01-27T04:12:10Z</published> <updated>2010-01-27T04:12:10Z</updated> <content type="html">The caveman was infuriated with me.<br /><br /><i>Look,</i> he said, <i>We started using language so we could be better people. Hunt better or live longer or have a stronger family, that kind of thing. Keep safe from predators. Every time you use language for another purpose you just make us more angry with our righteous and unquestionable caveman fury.</i><br /><br />"What," I replied, "so you patented language use or something?"<br /><br />Then he hit me with a stick.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:371068</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/371068.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=371068" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2010-01-19T02:18:00</title> <published>2010-01-19T10:18:26Z</published> <updated>2010-01-19T10:19:01Z</updated> <content type="html">The way I understand it, most of the people working for electronic privacy didn't really get degrees in law or politics or even computers. They taught themselves all these things.<br /><br />So, you know, it's a battle between the <i>Autodidacts</i> and the <i>Panopticons</i>.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:370891</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/370891.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=370891" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2010-01-10T22:32:00</title> <published>2010-01-11T06:32:03Z</published> <updated>2010-01-11T06:32:03Z</updated> <content type="html">I just remembered that I've made a commitment to misinterpreting Internet acronyms in the comments section of my LiveJournal.<br /><br />Please enter a comment that uses some Internetese acronyms so that I can misinterpret them! Passive-aggressive thanks in advance!</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:370501</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/370501.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=370501" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Krondar?</title> <published>2010-01-10T21:24:30Z</published> <updated>2010-01-10T21:24:30Z</updated> <content type="html">So I told my next door neighbor about all of my legal troubles, and he was very kind and sympathetic. The next day, I was walking by and I saw him in his garage, hard at work on something.<br /><br />"I'm solving all your legal problems!" he told me with a proud grin.<br /><br />"Thanks," I said, trying to be nice. I wanted to ask how, but didn't want to hurt his feelings by sounding skeptical.<br /><br />"In this day and age, it's more efficient to build a robot lawyer than to hire an existing lawyer," he explained, bolting a tie into place.<br /><br />That was the most inane thing I ever heard.<br /><br />"I'm skeptical," I said gently.<br /><br />"Because you're worried that I don't know anything about law, right? So how could I program a robot lawyer? Well, don't worry. I designed the robot to be <i>possessed by the ghost of a famous dead lawyer</i>! You will have the best legal representation evar!"<br /><br />I had visions of the court scene that would come up, and couldn't help but to wince.<br /><br />"Think of it this way," said my neighbor, who was genuinely trying to be helpful, "I think we can agree that our caveman ancestors were perfectly in tune with nature, and obeyed their intrinsic evolutionary impulses, right? So therefore they were perfect and everything they did was healthy and ideal. And we should be more like cavemen in everything we do."<br /><br />"That's a very interesting theory," I said.<br /><br />"I'm glad you agree. The cavemen didn't have lawyers. When they had a problem they would solve it by building tools and calling on spirits. So that must be the best way to fix your legal problems."<br /><br />"No, thank you," I said as gently as I could, and walked away, trying to ignore his sudden burst of profanity.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:370181</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/370181.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=370181" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>being temporary</title> <published>2010-01-09T21:05:35Z</published> <updated>2010-01-09T21:05:35Z</updated> <content type="html">So, we all got our confirmation that our new bodies (made from texturized vegetable fiber and top-shelf microbrew root beer) are on the way and should be arriving in six to eight weeks. We're all quite excited, of course.<br /><br />But since we got confirmation, we have all been feeling an intense need to run our exchangeable bodies down to the wire. You know, the ones we were born with.<br /><br />We've been skiing and drinking and studying ballet, and driving too fast and having a lot of bacon and suntans and unprotected sex. Heck, we have started smoking -- not because it's particularly pleasant, but it just seems like a waste not to use up these healthy pink lungs. We were starting to look into ritual scarring and deep-sea diving when we got a call saying that the shipping company had accidentally shipped our microbrew root beer to a music festival in Austin and we would have to wait "twelve to infinity" weeks for the next shipment.<br /><br />So I'm going to demand a refund and start looking around for one of those companies that gives you a parrot body instead. There's no way that could go wrong. Any recommendations?</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:369942</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/369942.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=369942" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>finding something to like</title> <published>2010-01-04T04:54:03Z</published> <updated>2010-01-04T04:54:03Z</updated> <content type="html">I really want to give it a chance, but this <i>Unpopular Science</i> magazine is bumming me out.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:369742</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/369742.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=369742" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Graduation Ceremony!</title> <published>2010-01-03T20:44:05Z</published> <updated>2010-01-03T20:44:05Z</updated> <content type="html">I just went to my high school graduation ceremony yesterday. I want to tell you about the speech I heard.<br /><br />I suppose I'd better justify myself first.<br /><br />There was a freak hailstorm on the day of my outdoor graduation ceremony, so we rescheduled for the next weekend, inside the auditorium, but the auditorium roof caved in the day before and we cancelled again.<br /><br />A week later we had a local movie theatre booked, but there was a bomb scare. The local dance hall the next week was accidentally double-booked and we lost the coin toss. In desperation, we just planned to have it in a parking lot, and this time there was a rain of frogs the night before and the whole place was quarantined. Two other high schools offered their auditoriums, but both of them backed out for fear that they'd get hit by a fire or earthquake or whatever else -- nobody wanted our particular bad luck.<br /><br />All summer through there were 14 separate attempts to reschedule the graduation, and all failed. Then another remake over Thanksgiving break, but nobody could agree on a date and time. Winter break graduation fell apart due to infighting, and the next spring the class after us refused utterly to let us participate.<br /><br />Since then, we have had eight more attempts to have our graduation ceremony, each of them foiled, mostly by our increasingly busy lives. This weekend, eighteen and a half years later, we finally managed to have the ceremony. I got my diploma!<br /><br />The valedictorian gave the speech that she had prepared for the original graduation:<br /><br />"Soon, fellow graduates, we will be leaving these halls of learning and going out into the Real World. Nothing we have learned here can prepare us for the things we'll see in the Real World. In the Real World, anvils dropped upon your head will cause fractures and concussions, not comical dizziness. In the Real World, when your eyes jump out of your head from surprise you may be blind for life. In the Real World, cars cannot talk, or see through their headlamps, or smile with their front bumper. In the Real World, people are more likely to watch contrived and as-yet-unwritten awkward living situations on MTV rather than invent invisibility potions. In the Real World, all numbers can be expressed in decimal representation, though not necessarily finite or repeating. In the Real World, there are too many bridges that Roy Orbison can burn. Please keep all this in mind as you go out and face this new decade of the nineties."<br /><br />The more things change, the less they stay the same.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:369549</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/369549.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=369549" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Sea?</title> <published>2010-01-01T09:14:11Z</published> <updated>2010-01-01T09:14:11Z</updated> <content type="html">At midnight exactly, I turned into a giant sea turtle, about forty-five feet across, with ceramic lacing in my muscles to bolster them and overcome that whole square-cube ratio problem.<br /><br />Anyway, I think I might spend all of 2010 as a sea turtle. You know, catch the waves.<br /><br />Happy new year!</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:369358</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/369358.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=369358" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>Air</title> <published>2009-12-23T05:48:20Z</published> <updated>2009-12-23T05:57:32Z</updated> <content type="html">The professor held up her hand with her thumb apart from her fingers, marking a volume of space maybe about three inches in a cube.<br /><br />"This air here is far from boring," she told us, "If you were stuck inside this patch of air, you'd notice how much was happening. The air vibrates with the words I'm saying, and the hum of the heater system we're ignoring, and the rustling of everyone in the room. You'd have photons carrying the sights of this whole room, all inside this little patch of air, and down the electromagnetic spectrum, you'd have an orchestra of radio stations playing all kinds of different music, news, advertisements and commentary. If you paid close attention to those radio stations, you might start to understand the economic forces behind them, the push and pull of demographics, the jostling attempts to capture listeners, the ebb and flow of consumer spending and debt and new business ideas and the march of science, all in those radio waves, all in this patch of air. A little lower down the spectrum, hopefully obfuscated with a little dash of encryption, you'd find thousands of cell phone conversations, packets of wireless data, and so on. If you were really astute, you might even notice the faintest trace of a pull from every other atom in the universe, enough to build a full map."<br /><br />I raised my hand, "You'd also see water molecules talking about the weather."<br /><br />She nodded, keeping her hand around that patch of air, "Yes! And complex currents of air at different temperatures. And protons and electrons seeking one another out with a constant longing. But the drama doesn't end there. You have dust molecules drifting along in their reminiscence, and viruses seeking out new victims. You have bacteria pushing one another aside to gobble on bits of dead skin that make up the dust. You have bustling, vicious, verdant, violent and competitive life, blossoming full and rich dramas of birth and death, all happening in this little patch of air. You have reflections of distant dramas projected onto the molecules from elsewhere. You have every little bit struggling to get the most of what it in particular likes to get. And heedless of all of that, you have aloof and noble neutrinos zipping by, unperturbed by anything else that happens in this circle. And who knows how many other undetectable particles there might be? This is quite the exciting patch of air."<br /><br />With her other hand, she indicated another patch of air, about three feet to her left from that first patch of air, and maybe a few inches back.<br /><br />"This patch of air here, though," she said, nodding toward her left hand with a sour face of contempt, "is totally boring. Let's just ignore it. Stupid patch of air."</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:368928</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/368928.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=368928" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>talking about talking about the weather</title> <published>2009-12-22T09:37:34Z</published> <updated>2009-12-22T09:37:34Z</updated> <content type="html">If you ask the water molecules about the weather, you will get a different answer from every single one. <i>Sure are a lot of nitrogen atoms</i>, one might say. Or <i>aren't you a little big to be chatting up a water molecule there?</i> Or <i>I know, I know, these hydrogen atoms look like Mickey Mouse ears, right?</i><br /><br />A particular water molecule doesn't know if it's rain or snow or steam or sleet or just ambient moisture, but you can pretty much assume that every little guy is excited to be part of the weather and eager to do its part. You gotta love 'em for that; they really give the whole thing their all. Thanks, water molecules. If I pass you by in the hallway tomorrow morning, I won't play it cool pretend not to know you. We're not like that, aich-two-oh, you and me. You know I got your back. Thanks for all that weather.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:368728</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/368728.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=368728" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>guard rails</title> <published>2009-12-21T21:33:23Z</published> <updated>2009-12-21T21:33:23Z</updated> <content type="html">The thing I think about, when I look at the sky, is the big volcano at the South Pole where all the kids gather together with their blue crayons of so many shades, lining up all jittery and excited for the moment when each one gets their chance to toss their personal crayons down into the Caldera and watch it come back up in smoke and paint the sky another few smidgeons of new shades of blue, then watch it blend in and swirl together in that uniform shade I see in the sky today. That lovely flawless shade that makes me think of childhood and smile wistfully.<br /><br />Have you been there? Have you taken your own children there,or will you when you have them? I am scared to go back -- it would ruin me to go there and find out they've installed guard rails.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:368550</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/368550.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=368550" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2009-12-07T12:00:00</title> <published>2009-12-07T20:00:22Z</published> <updated>2009-12-07T20:13:41Z</updated> <content type="html">You know, it's pages like <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/zazzle.products.php?defid=3980572">this</a> that make me glad that I listened to that friendly camel who told me about the Internet back in 1890.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:368356</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/368356.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=368356" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2009-12-01T09:54:00</title> <published>2009-12-01T17:54:44Z</published> <updated>2009-12-01T17:54:44Z</updated> <content type="html">I just got voted off the Island of Dr. Moreau.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:367964</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/367964.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=367964" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2009-11-26T10:48:00</title> <published>2009-11-26T18:48:50Z</published> <updated>2009-11-26T18:48:50Z</updated> <content type="html">A Thanksgiving thought:<br /><br />There are a lot of people alive today who were born when the gorilla was largely believed to be a myth, at least by Europeans.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:367678</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/367678.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=367678" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2009-11-25T00:23:00</title> <published>2009-11-25T08:23:54Z</published> <updated>2009-11-25T08:23:54Z</updated> <content type="html">"To complete your time machine, all you need to the right background music. Specifically, a gay heavy metal band."<br /><br />I'm not sure that I've ever heard of one.<br /><br /><div><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1490108">View Poll: #1490108</a></div></content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:367400</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/367400.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=367400" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>merovingian @ 2009-11-24T12:36:00</title> <published>2009-11-24T20:36:03Z</published> <updated>2009-11-24T20:36:03Z</updated> <content type="html">On a molecular level, I'm being very serious right now.</content> </entry> <entry> <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:merovingian:367160</id> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/367160.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/> <link href="http://merovingian.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=367160" rel="self" type="text/xml"/> <title>What I talk about when I talk about robots</title> <published>2009-11-23T04:57:39Z</published> <updated>2009-11-23T05:21:52Z</updated> <content type="html">A while back (when discussing Moleman Rhyming Slang) I mentioned terms used to describe desirable traits in robots. Some people were confused.<br /><br />Here's a quick glossary!<br /><br /><a name="cutid1"></a><ul><li><strong>Acidity:</strong> Refers to the acid-spraying reservoir that some robots have. Such robots spray people who attempt to discuss the weather with them. Do not bring up the weather with a robot that has high acidity.<br /><li><strong>Bouquet:</strong> When a robot brings you flowers, it is not a good thing. Usually this means the robot is going to start making weird romantic advances. Awkward!<br /><li><strong>Dry:</strong> All robots make fun of people, due to the Eleventh Law of Robotics. The "dryness" of a robot refers to how subtle the humor is. Seen as a desirable trait, because if the robot's humor is sufficiently dry, it's easier to ignore.<br /><li><strong>Earthy:</strong> Some robots have a tendency to play you folk songs on an acoustic guitar, to talk about their feelings a lot, to drink tea, and to do yoga. Robot yoga is pretty amazing to watch!<br /><li><strong>Fruit:</strong> Efforts to make more inexpensive robot brains led to the innovative trend of using old Apple ][ computers, usually picked up from obsolete high school labs. A robot that uses such a computer is described as "appley" or having "hints of apple." Further cost-saving trends included using old Apple knock-off imitation brands, such as pear, berry, orange and banana. Generally, such robots are cheap but efficient.<br /><li><strong>Legs:</strong> After watching the movie "A Christmas Story," most robots begin to collect lamps made from mannikin legs. This is seen as a desirable trait because it really does cheer up a robot to have a good hobby. The more legs the better.<br /><li><strong>Oak:</strong> Short for "Oklahoma School of Robotics." The Oklahoma School is a leading robotics design group, known most prominently for their trademark of teaching all their robots to breakdance. If a robot is described as "oaky" or having "flavors of oak" that means it can breakdance.<br /><li><strong>Smoky:</strong> A friendly bear who prevents forest fires. When this term is used to describe a robot, it can either mean that the robot is covered in fur, or that the robot helps stop forest fires, or just that the robot is friendly.<br /><li><strong>Tannins:</strong> Microscopic helper-robots that scuttle along the surface of a bigger robot with buffer-brushes, keeping the robot shiny. Usually seen as desirable, but they emit so many complaints in ultrasound frequencies that they exasperate nearby dogs. Called "tannins" because if a robot has too many, the robot turns that same weird orangey-gold color that white people get from chemical tanning cream.<br /><li><strong>Well-Balanced:</strong> The first generation of sentient robots were all based on the Golem of Prague, and had a tendency to go berserk, especially in the presence of Judaism. This behavior was euphemistically described as "erratic." The second and subsequent generations of robots didn't do this, but people ask if a robot is "well-balanced" anyway just to be sure.<br /><li><strong>Woody:</strong> Many efforts have been made to design robots that turn into automobiles. Overall, this is impractical and results in a mediocre robot that can vaguely transform into a mediocre vehicle. The only successful models so far have been robots that change into old station wagons with wood paneling. A robot described as "woody" can make such a transformation.</ul><br /><br />Hope this helps!</content> </entry></feed>