*glitters and shines* To celebrate the event, and to keep with the general theme, I will now adorn the room with a completely non-existent object from hte mighty CEO's fave movie, 'The Lord of the Rings'!

"You are Galadriel's Mirrorball.  A gift to her from Sauron in the days when he masked his evil, you wreak havoc among the weak-minded.  The elven queen herself has been seen sneaking away to her secret glade to dance the night away to wicked music.  You may be the downfall of Middle-Earth."

...the Object itself...

Yeah, baby...let's....grooo~ve!

Want to bring your own? Find it here!

[ January 10, 2004: Message edited by: lian-dono ]

What an... odd poll. I was mirror ball too, by the way. :P

~cackles like a madwoman~ It's all my fault! I knew it!!

You are Pippin's curling iron. With you, he has the nicest, waviest hair of any Took. Frodo tried to take you away at Amon Hen, causing Boromir to chase after him and get shot full of arrows. It's all your fault.

Take a look!

Gollums teddy bear reminds me of something...I just found this link. It's absolutely priceless.

Mental plushy toys need to be therapized...by YOU!

This is sooo unbelievably sweet. Go, heal the paranoid crocodile! It's worth it. *Sniff* So moving...

Wow! It has returned. There's an Aan too.

*swoons*

ok, can i just say, i want some of whatever drugs it is they give to the crocodile.

I'm Legolas' Chia Bunny. *L*

[b] You are Legolas' Chia-bunny. You traveled with him to the mines of Moria, through the wonders of Lothlorien, only to be lost during the skirmish against the Warg-riders when Gimli used you as a small offensive weapon. Legolas mourned long for you.

I am Gollum's teddy bear too.  And then I had to see which elf I was.   Legolas all the way.  Figures. 
  Does anyone else usually end up as someone of the opposite gender on these quizzes?  I almost always wind up male.  For instance, one of my favorites was "what D&D character are you most like?"  I was a chaotic evil half-orc barbarian ranger guy.   And for some reason, this caused my friends to crack up and say "so true, SO true" between the giggles.

Knowing my passion for the Segway, my brother sent me this article about something that looked like an uber-Segway on steroids:

The next generation of Human Transporting

I would have posted it earlier if not for the little issue for S'march being down so long. :P

I've got a nutty question for your theatre types: has anyone here acted at a community theater?

I've been playing around with a crazy idea to audition this weekend for a role in a local production of "M*A*S*H".  I figure with my Asian looks, I could pass for a wounded South Korean soldier or something.  But with my luck, I'll probably end up as that one cross-dressing private. :)

The Monday Night Rant #52
by Aan`allein

Once upon a time, when the world had shrunk to a size such that dragons discovered that the territory housing them had become limited, but when the world was at least still large enough to contain dragons at all, a time when mermaids and sea-serpents frolicked alongside ships loaded with quicksilver and epic battles had not yet evolved their current strategies of hiding beyond the comprehension of the everyday human, but seemed to be on the verge of extinction as a result of mankind's incessant pursuit, the little people collectively arrived at a Conclusion. Now you must understand that although modern humans have the capability of arriving at conclusions at a frighteningly fast pace (some would even say that we have become "hasty" at arriving at conclusions), this was not the case in these days of yore, and that even if it had been the case, the little people, though in so many ways so very similar to us, have always been vastly different from us in those areas which really matter, and although the speed of arriving at conclusions doesn't matter quite as much as the capabilities of beholding beauty, finding and recognizing inspiration, or enjoying the taste of chocolate, in the little scheme of things it still matters quite a bit. All of which is but to say that the little people arriving at a Conclusion was a momentous occasion, an occasion which had filled many of the older little people with no end of feelings of foreboding, an occasion which had spawned at least three competing holy books of prophecy, and above all an occasion which warranted endless discussions and ruminations in front of crackling fires, the better to imprint into the collective memory of the little people how things had been Before, so that when all was said and done they would be able to Remember, and Learn and maybe even Envision how things could have been if only they had known beforehand what they knew now.
Yes, I can see you shaking your head unbelievingly there in the back, but it is true. The little people might not know Doubt, and we ourselves, even in these enlightened times, have yet to learn the vast majority of Truth which has been their heritage for longer than most stars have been shining, but still the little people do not know most of what the future will bring, and are capable of making mistakes, and even have a feeling similar to fear of doing so.

This then, is the tale of the Conclusion the little people had arrived at, the Decision which followed as a natural result, and what lessons we might derive from the knowledge of these events.

Now you must understand that for the little people, arriving at Conclusions is not an activity lightly undertaken, and so there is an amazingly complex set of events which led up to this. To properly understand all that went into the making of the Conclusion, we would have to devote an evening every seven days for the next three years to examining just the more important of these events, and then still we would know but a fragment of the true story. Unfortunately, at this point most of us lack the scheduling resources to free up so many evenings for so long, and so we will have to make do with just the broadest sketch of what happened Before. I do however implore all of you, individually and jointly, to beseech your Personal Teachers to devote some resources to truly understanding the geomythical situation of these days, as many of the vectors inherent in our current lives can be traced back to those days.

So. I already mentioned that this was a time when dragons still had room to exist on this world (even though it was a severely limited and too well-delineated space), and I could see some of the youngest members in our audience leaning in so as to not miss anything which might be said of them. The more experienced of you might well heed their example, for there is much which is not generally known of these magnificent creatures. Perhaps their most misunderstood characteristic is their ability to dive into the smallest empty spaces on any map and resurface in a different time. Does this mean dragons have mastered the art of timetravel? Nay, they have not. Nor does it mean, as I have heard some claim, that time is meaningless for them. Yet, as whipped cream will slowly dissolve into hot chocolate, dragons will dissolve into the stream of time and travel through realms unbeknownst to even the little people, following a linearity altogether less straight than the one we know, and popping above the surface in the Before or the After depending on vortices and swirlings of the stuff of life which will probably be quite impossible to map. And yet, such a mapping was in fact attempted by an old dragon primarily existing in those days, a dragon both more foolhardy and wiser than the average dragon (insofar as any dragon can ever be said to be "average"). Dragons have always relied upon other entities to draw the maps and create the empty spaces into which they would disappear, but this dragon had in mind the dream of creating a sort of dragonesque meta-map, a map which would show not just whereness, but whenceness. Did this dragon, in some part of its vast mind, perhaps hope to thusly create white spaces for some wholly unknown entity to dive through? Or was it even more ambitious, and hope to somehow itself take advantage of these white spaces? Such questions are, I fear, not for us to ponder for any length of time, but I do admit to spending more than one idle year probing around the edges of this mystery.
Be that as it may however, but this is not what I want to talk about today, no matter how interesting a sidetrack it is to explore. Rather, let us just say that in the course of this dragon's enterprise, he discovered something which might perhaps best be described as 'lightgray space'. Whenceever this dragon would pop out of the chocolate-like substance of existence in this realm, he would be stretched thin, feel hazy, and be somewhat foglike. A strong breeze would be enough to hamper his progress, and the one autumn storm he encountered was almost enough to dissolve his existence altogether. Now, I don't need to tell you that to creatures as vast and massive as dragons, the idea of the mere movement of air being able to dissolve them was not something they would like to dwell on at all. But dwell on it this dragon must, for he had wisdom, which is perhaps the greatest curse any aware mind can be inflicted with. And so, after many deliberations and ponderings, this dragon attempted communication with the Map Makers, a race of beings the dragon had never observed, but whose existence had long ago been deduced. Sad to say, the Map Makers were at this time not capable of receiving the communication of dragons. Had this tale taken place in a different Era, the Era of our little boy with his magical apparatus, this tale would be a wholly different one, for yes, the way dragons communicate is quite similar to how magical apparati fling words into the wide, wide world. But it didn't take place in that Era, and so the dragon attempted communication, and then listened and listened and listened, hoping for a reply, for any sign that the communication had been received. Yet none was forthcoming.
Dragons of course do not despair. What this one did do, however, is as of yet a mystery. We don't have any further knowledge of this dragon's actions, and neither do the little people (or if they do, they do not yet consider us ready to learn of it).

So, does the tale then end here? Fear not, for it does not. Remember, this is not a tale of dragons. This is a tale of the little people, and their Conclusion.

Yes, indeed, the little people.
Although the dragon never received a sign that his communication had been heard, the communication itself wasn't lost. Communication is after all nothing but the transmission of information, and, as some of you will have learned already, information is never destroyed, only ever created.
The little people know little of magical apparati and the ways in which these fling words into the wide, wide world, but they do know of the way things Are. And so, when during the autumn following the dragon's communication they observed how some trees retained their leaves longer than expected, and how other leaves fell in different ways than they should have, and then even saw that some leaves which should have been brown were instead red... well, suffice it to say this caused quite some agitation. Now, you might wonder if they shouldn't have seen the signs of this coming during the summer, and perhaps they should have, but not even the little people can be expected to pay attention to everything all the time, and during this summer they had been exceptionally busy with some venture which they insist is altogether incomprehensible for us big people, and so refuse to describe in any detail whatsoever.
Autumn then it was, and suddenly they noticed. And so a call went out to the little people wherever they existed, to observe and report, and over the following weeks and months these reports came back, and a vast mass of little people were put to work sorting this incoming data into neat stacks, and other little people ran between the stacks and compared reports about the same leaves as observed from different vantage points, and they wrote down their findings, which were sorted into yet other stacks by yet more little people, and so on and so forth, for fifteen weeks and two, until at last a detailed picture took shape in the collective minds of the little people as to what had happened. This picture, or, as they called it, model of reality, was then put through permutations and translations without end, thereby slowly sieving actual information from the data, which was tasted and tested and probed and prodded upon by numerous of the very wisest of the little people, so that, some two years and twelve days after the initial communication, the little people suddenly perceived a vision of themselves existing in a vast dark cavern (vast even for the little people, for whom everything is large by default). Existing in this cavern then, they noticed the light slowly dimming. This caused some initial confusion, for they had thought the cavern to be dark already, but as the light went out completely, a hush came over the little people, and their entire being seemed to be suffused with the impression of a single message; "we are listening now."
Slowly the cavern widened. The roof disappeared above them, becoming vast as the sky, the far end of the cavern stretched far beyond their senses of perception; senses which, as you all know, are vastly more refined than those of any other being we have knowledge of. Impenetrable darkness remained, but behind them the cavernwall turned white, while in the distance they slowly became aware of a large body of water. Whether ocean of lake, they did not know, but the question became moot as within seconds the sun rose up out of this body of water, shining them straight in the eye. And then the little people were touched within their very souls with new knowledge, and at the same time saw five massive ships sailing out of the sun, each sporting five massive masts flying more sails than they had ever beheld, and all crowded with themselves. Yes, that is right, the little people saw themselves, coming in out of the sunrise on ships which they had evidently built themselves (for they in this Era had not yet achieved communication with any other race, and so who else could have built them?), and landing on this rocky shore of a place which they had never seen before, which on any other occasion would have been enough shock in and of itself to leave the little people stunned, for they thought they had known all of the world already.
Meanwhile, the knowledge which had touched their souls filtered down to their awareness, and so they learned of the dragon, and of a time when dragons would fade, and of the need for true white on maps; the need for mystery and the knowledge of vastness and majestic vistas. A need, moreover, for not only the little people to possess this knowledge, but for them, somehow, to remind the Map Makers.

The hour grows late, and although the younger members of our audience are engaged in a heroic struggle not to let it show, I can see that the time has come to wrap up this tale. And so I shall. Most of you can imagine the long deliberations started when this vision faded from the little people, but in the end they came to the Conclusion which started this tale, and made their Decision, and the ships were built, and many of the little people boarded them, knowing they would never again hear from the little people which would stay behind, and slowly the ships set out in search of this country - their only clues as to its location being that they didn't yet know the place, and that coming out of the water they would gaze upon a white background. Would this be a long white cloud, snow-covered mountains, or perhaps some other phenomenon they had never before encountered? They did not know, but set out in search for it, they did. The adventures which were their part during this journey were many, and some day perhaps I shall have the pleasure of telling some of those tales, but for now let it suffice to say that at last they arrived at a new land, a land where the mountains were both snow- and cloud-covered, and so doubly white. Over the following years the little people spread out all over this new place, and engaged in tasks various and strange, their one goal always to preserve mystery and make it apparent on a grander scale than they had ever dreamed possible, a scale designed solely for reaching out to the Map Makers when these mysterious beings would arrive in this place.
This task continues even to the present day, taking up the attention of most of the little people, and so when we visit this place, we might not immediately see that they are present, but the results of their work can not be missed, and have indeed not been missed.

And that, my friends, is the tale of how the little people came to Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud, and of what they are doing here. Honor their struggles in your thoughts, and be glad for their wisdom and their works, for they are magnificent indeed.

¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤

*grins and welcomes people back* Pardon the mess, but although I have revived our hamsters and crushed the rebellion of our invisible cats, they have not yet completely returned to the routine of their tasks, and so the quality of our accommodation might not be up to snuff. Does anyone know whatever happened to Rook R. Rooklius? - I do so hope that his world domination plans won't interfere with mine...

Strange to realize that right now as I'm writing this it's indeed Monday Night here in New Zealand (the longest Monday Night of the year even), and that when I post this it will still be Monday Night in a large part of the world. I do profusely apologize for neglecting this place for so long, but as the above tale might have explained, the little people in this part of the world are not readily available for communication, and so it took a while before I noticed them and for my creative impulses to be refreshed.

Anyway, as this is the fiftysecond Monday Night Rant, I hereby doth declare that not only yet another Monday has come to an end, but even that an entire Year has now passed. I know it doesn't seem nearly as long as that, but counting Mondays does not lie, an so after fiftytwo weeks we must sadly wave goodbye to the previous year, and welcome a new one, which hopefully will be just as filled with delightful opportunities for corruption and conquest as the last one. :)

And so I bid you all to sleep well, to wake, and to dream of the little people!

i think that new bombardier was cool, especially when i read that it's powered by a fuel cell. i wasn't able to find how fast it goes though, do you think it could get above 45?