Holy crap, I finally changed the name of this xanga in the title bar to match the header after six years!  I do not know why I waited so long.  Oh wait, 'cuz I'm lazy.  And I don't like change.  Mostly the first one.

More laziness: I said I would use up all the quotes I had collected over the years willy-nilly, but obviously I've not been keeping my word till the last entry.

Independence Day is annoying, in that stupid people keep lighting up fireworks.  Fireworks are fine, except when I'm not watching them.  Then it's just fucking annoying.  BAM!  WHIZZ!  WHOOSH!  SPEW!  It's like a frickin' Batman episode starring Adam West all up in here.

Stupid NYS, putting tax on my online orders.

Also, please don't be a jingoistic freak.

Edit: Oh, so xanga finally has cut tags, eh?  Congratulations on being like three years late.  Yet I'm still here.  What can I say, I have too much crap here to excise this site completely, but clearly I'm not here as often as I used to be back then, reading up on all the xanga updates.  Waiting for the tags implementation finally made me give up on waiting for anything worthy and timely from xanga.  I suppose anyone who exclusively uses xanga could care less, but I do not exclusively use xanga.  Superfluous stuff like pulse, xanga minis, I don't really care about.  My physiological blog needs are tags, cut links, a monthly calendar (which xanga got rid of years ago), and military time.  WP.com is very nearly perfect in what I want, and LJ comes fairly close to WP.  Xanga can't even do tags right, so there is a gigantic middle chunk of my entries I just gave up on tagging.  I really can't think of any redeeming qualities for the Xang, except maybe the one-click preview button (or Edit HTML).  Other sites have it too, but the way xanga sets it up is much more convenient.  Or not, I have no idea.  When I can I automatically set my entry editors on all sites to raw html/plain text, not rich text.  Oh wait, I remember a whole thing that happened a few years back with me trying to switch between editors on xanga and getting supremely aggravated.  Okay whatever.  I've typed "xanga" way too many times already.

Sometimes I think I am too immersed in the Internets.  I should go out, check out J&R, buy a laptop...

A truck crashed into a bus about two blocks from where I live.  I was in Brooklyn while it happened.  A minute before I left to go to the subway to get back to Manhattan, my friend called, but I decided to call her back later because I was trying to get ready.  A few seconds later, my text message alert sounded, which is weird because she never sends texts.  It wasn't until I was in the train that I checked the message: it was from NotifyNYC notifying me to avoid Bowery and Canal because of a bus and truck collision, which is kinda hard since I was pretty much going to be one block away from Bowery and Canal.  I called back my friend who had pretty much the same message.

It's just, holy crap, I've passed the intersection where the scene of the accident happened millions of times, my eye always on the bridge to make sure any vehicles are too far away, before rushing across.  But I don't take into account anything else.  Apparently, the truck had violations and was not supposed to be on the road; how would I know something like that before the axle suddenly breaks and I can't get away in time?  How would I know the car that seems a safe distance away has some drunk guy behind the wheel?

I saw the aftermath of the truck pressed into the back of the bus pressed into the bank.  It was surreal as hell, just seeing that empty metal husk there with its luggage hold doors opened wide to nothingness for all to see.  The felled traffic light, the fire hydrant lying horizontally, the dump truck's first victim.  Everyone gawking, taking pictures, calling people to inform them: I am here. (Clearly, I am reading Chuck Palahniuk right now [just finished Rant]. I often copy an author's style of writing while I'm reading them. For a few months after reading Ada or Ardor, I kept doing [excessive (and [annoying (parentheses [and brackets])])], which I still do once in a while.) Only a couple months ago a huge tractor trailer mowed down an old woman hurrying to cross the street just a block away.  That woman was like ninety-years-old though, and shouldn't have been running across the street anyway, especially where vehicles coming off the bridge pass through.  (Also, the guy couldn't see her, sitting up there on his [high] seat.)

Once, my brain went to some theta level of activity and I was in a dazed stupor crossing the street.  A taxi barely swiped my backside before I realized what the hell was going on: I was in the middle of a busy street during a red light in New York City.  Clearly, two decades of living in Manhattan has desensitized me so I was able to ignore the largest city in the nation all around me.

I have been seeing way too many Lillian Lee's around lately.

Lillian Lee designed a cover for an edition of The Golden Compass:


I like covers like these, instead of overtly obvious ones with Nicole Kidman or a polar bear (though that's pretty much the same thing) on the front.
Lillian Lee went to Cornell.

And I think someone I know is being fresh and stupid and signed me up to receive Victoria's Secret catalogues under the name "Lillian M Lee" (at my Manhattan address), which -- I must confess -- is a fine, sophisticated alias for myself, except this is for VS, not The New Yorker, although who really wants to subscribe to The New Yorker.  Not me.  Haha, I'm joking.  If someone were to send me a gift subscription, I would totally not cancel it.

And I dreamt I smoked.  It was weird and lame.  I was holding the stogie like a cigarette, but I didn't put it to my mouth.  I just inhaled while the cigarette was almost arm's length away from me and then I exhaled smoke.  It was so weird, I had to wake up and write about it right now!  Also, my computer was asleep so I thought, "Eh, what the hell.  I woke up and now it's time for you to!"

I finally earned the hard badge on Nuclear Eagle after two days!  Okay, time to stop procrastinating.  Seriously.

Fuck you, Firefox, "dreamt" IS a word.

Once again, I am baffled by the general tastes of Americans (one word: Crocs).  What exactly is so "offensive" tasting about UHT-treated milk?  I think the taste is much more appealingly delicious than regularly pasteurized milk, except maybe Farmland Dairies' Special Request Skim Plus because it is low in fat yet oh-so-creamy.  I could totally imagine myself having an love affair with an ice-cream sandwich made of Skim Plus.

Then again, my tastes can be considered bizarre (here in the states of unity, at least).  I love bitter melon to the point of crying in the shower in my denim cut-offs wondering why my shower head is inundating me with water rather than pieces of bitter melon.  I enjoy malt vinegar on my fries, soaked up by dumplings, flavoring my noodle soups.  I like mixing ketchup and mayonnaise in a fatty lycopene dipping mixture for my fries.  I LOVE SPINACH!

I like riding the subway.  I like going out of my way to ride new routes on the subway.  I like walking around Manhattan, breathing in the fumes that make my nasal passages look like a chimney sweep's.  I like Arrested Development, especially the way they think.

And you know, very few people I know in real life seem to go online as much as I and the rest of the heavily-invested Internet community do.  "What's LiveJournal?"  HOLY CRAP  SOME PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHAT LJ IS!  I mean, I don't think I go on for an inordinate amount of time, but I certainly know what people/places/things are.

"I mean, I guess it would just be a guy who you know, grabs bananas and runs.  Or, uhm, a banana that grabs things.  I don't know why.  Why would a banana grab another banana?  I mean, those are the kind of questions I don't want to answer."  Man, am I seriously jonesing for some Arrested Development, or what?