spacemonk

mike: I was just thinking I was kinda missing hijacking your blog!

Hubby and I were watching a couple of minutes of Spy Games with Brad (swoon) Pitt and Robert Redford. Hubby took one look at Robert Redford and said, "Uh, Bob? Sundance does not mean you should spend years dancing in the sun! Man! His face has turned into leather!"

Discuss...

2 tired 2 blog

jen, sure you're not up for a guest entry?

someone say something and everyone else make witty retorts...

i think over the counter cold medications mask the symptoms just long enough for you to think you are feeling better so you can go off and do things, so when they wear off you feel even worse...more tired cause you were off doing things when you should have been buried under a mountain of blankets.

having a bit of a mini-blizzard today. the f-ing power keeps going out keeping me from working on my paper. must have had a dozen power outages today - 2 of which were extended - coming at taunting frequencies. that seems to be behind us now. that's the only thing i dislike about where i live - the power goes out far too frequently. i emailed off my paper - think it's good enough to bring me an A for the course. been listening to the stone roses and karta by Markus Stockhausen / Arild Andersen / Patrice Héral / Terje Rypdal - whichever isn't stuck in the computer when the power goes out. the stone roses is becoming a favorite. i am finally seeing the hype it got as justified. karta is a record i've had for a while, but just getting into now. it's icy scandinavian blend of jazz/rock/classical/electronic music is perfect for today's stark weather. people sometimes chuckle when i talk about european - esp. scandinavian jazz, but there is a who group of great players - mainly on ecm records- who i feel have added to the music and not just copied the american form.

have a splitting headache.
feh

i don't feel well. first cold/flu of the ohio cold/flu season for me which generally runs from sept-may. wanna know how not well i feel. yesterday i passed on:
a. the thurs afternoon skate which generally is not well attended giving me darn near the whole ice to myself
b. the chance to go with my yoga teacher to a class taught by a local teacher who's supposed to be good...
that's sick. bleh

daily buddhist thought (beliefnet)

The mind is something more radiant than anything else can be, but because counterfeits--passing defilements--come and obscure it, it loses its radiance, like the sun when obscured by clouds. Don't go thinking that the sun goes after the clouds. Instead, the clouds come drifting along and obscure the sun.

-Ajaan Mun, "Heart Released"

I am soooo sick of not being able to blog on my own site so I'm scrapping MT and blogging with no blog software! Well, I guess to be accurate to say I'm blogging with Dreamweaver. Anyway, thanks so much mike for giving me a way to blog all week so that I didn't lose my mind. Also, if any of you have a link to my blog, please change it to be http://jenben.info/home.html. Thanks and big kisses to mike! -JenBen

fun from slate

i don't know or care beans about this, but the writer of this article must like the clash

also, keep tabs how close we are to war

funny article in the onion
only suggested improvement: should have made the guy a blogger instead - THAT would have rung true

Freakazoid Michael Jackson was caught dangling his 6 month old boy over a hotel balcony in Germany. The baby had a diaper over its head and is seen kicking away as Silly-putty dad holds onto the poor kid with one arm. Wanna check out the pic? -JenBen

I knew it!! -JenBen

liz kershaw on bbc6 suggested today that perhaps jimi hendrix is overrated and claimed that tom petty was as influential.

my emailed response, which she read on the air was: "Did you forget your medication this AM? Petty is cool, but as influential as Hendrix? Two words: puh-leaze!!!"

a spacemonk first: a guest blogger, frequent commenter, jen (see below) - welcome jen - please don't confuse my users by actually posting well written entries that actually have a point - they are not used to that - be nice to her, readers...

i'm still dead tired - despite going to bed earlier still.

if you are one of it's dozens of readers, you will see there is an extremely well written letter in fitness and speedskating times in response to an article about flexibility, urging all skaters to try yoga. perhaps in the interest of equal time, the author ought to write a letter to yoga journal extolling the benefits of inline skating

Look! A hacker at spacemonk! Actually, mike is kindly allowing me to screw up his blog while mine remains MIA. I woke up Sunday and there it wasn't. My blog was just a blank white page staring at me. You know, mike was the last person to comment on it before it went on its walkabout...hmmmm...

Anyway, I've since spent hours trying to get my blog back up with no success. It might have something to do with the fact that someone hacked my host's server. The following quote sums up my feelings at this point:

"Is it bad when you call all alcoholic drinks 'make-pain-go-bye-bye' juice?" - Patton Oswald

Thanks mike for letting me hog your blog! - JenBen

new link
mainly about movies includes such memorable posts as a list of movies entitled "I Could Eat A Can Of Kodak And Puke A Better Movie, But For Some Reason I Still Own It" and the memorable quote '"Peter O'Toole looks like he's walking around just to save funeral expenses." - John Huston'

international student group was selling international foods. i asked if there was any beef/chicken broth in the mjudra. the student complimented me on my pronounciation, said it's made with lentils, rice - i re-iterated, than sometimes dishes are made with chicken or beef stock too. to her credit, she told me she didn't know. i ended up getting hummos (always a favorite) she wondered how i knew so much about food - esp. international food- did i teach . i told her: a. i eat a lot b. i'm a vegetarian and as such often ethnic restaurants are good for vegetarians. she seemed legitimately interested in the notion that foods often have hidden ingredients - she said for her club that is important, cause some cultures don't eat pork whatever. for a number of reasons, vegetarian or not, one should know their food!

real tired today. not sure why. not really even a monday AM kind of thing.went to bed reasonably early last night. stayed up real late (for me) Sat PM playing video games, but thought i made up for it by sleeping in sunday AM (a rarity for me). perhaps it is just catching up with me. i've noticed that since the regularity of my yoga practice has slipped, my sunday PM class really kicks my butt - perhaps that contributes too...

if, as stína postulates, that my two obsessions are food and tv¹, then tonight, with alias, the sopranos and maybe curb your enthusiasm, accompanied by a snack of which i have begun the planning phase, i ought to be the happiest man on earth. which, in fact, i may be.

¹arguments if one can have two obsessions notwithstanding, i would disagree that those are my two obsessions. food, perhaps, may very well be in the top two, but tv, while probably is in the top ten, is not. skating, music, etc... are all higher ranked...

ok. at least one mystery re:attack of the clones resolved: what is on the bonus dvd. the tv ad said, i think, there is 6 hours of bonus material!?

well, this boy ain't got 6 hrs for such nonsense, but he does have time to sample it and this is what i found:

• deleted scenes: for the true believers these must be the equivalent of the pope announcing they found another gospel or something. for the rest of us, esp. those of us with a 2 hr rule, the scene and the associated commentary, i took, as a bit of an apology - i.e. hey, you think it's too long now - at least we cut this stuff out


• a quasi-documentary about r2d2 - as though he was an actual actor. chronicled his work in experimental theater. i wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. ubergeek material


• a montage of speial effects - how they layered the cgi w/live action - ok, this was pretty cool


• about 5 1/2 more hours of presumably equally enthralling and significant stuff

i love my dvd player. i would watch deleted scenes from the wizard of oz, would be curious how they do the stuff in crouching tiger, watch memento in temporal sequence and would love to hear commentary about dr. strangelove. but just as i am always suspect of record companies posthumously releasing "recently discovered work" of dead artists (the stuff was sooo great that it had to be hid away in a vault for 20 years, cause the world wasn't ready for it til now. right.), i am finding that special material on dvd's often is not that special.

daily buddhist thought of the day (from beliefnet)
Look into the sphere of birthless mind!
Let dawn the enjoyment of ceaseless play!
When free of hope and fear--that's the result.
Why speak of birth and death?
Come to the natural, unmodified state!

-Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibet's Beloved Saint, Milarepa


daily hindu thought of the day (from beliefnet)
Student: "How can I become enlightened?"

Neem Karoli Baba: "Feed people."