Troy Lenze

10:41 am: How To Make TV Better
My hypothesis: Changing the main character of a show you don't like into a dalek will make it better

Examples:
1. Friends: Instead of seeing Ross whine all the time, the Ross-dalek flails his plunger, eyestalk, and gun while yelling, "EX-TERM-I-NATE!!!"

2. ER: When doctor-dalek is told a patient is going into cardiac arrest, he flails and yells, "RE-SUSS-I-TATE!!!" If the patient can't breath, he flails and yells, "IN-TU-BATE!!"

3. The Practice: In her closing remarks, Cameron Manheim-dalek flails and shouts, "EX-ON-ER-ATE!!!"

4. American Idol: Contestant-dalek shoots everyone while shouting, "EX-TERM-I-NATE!!!"

Please comment with further examples or counter-examples.

10:22 pm: Give Me Your Tech Help!
So, one of my desktops died awhile back. It has an ethernet card in it I was thinking of scaveging. I already have an ethernet card in my other desktop, but if I add another one is there a chance I'll have an even faster connection? I'm running Ubuntu Linux on the living desktop if that matters.

12:48 am: Life Is Good
Life is good. I can say that after having lost my grandmother a few months ago and having had my father-in-law in the hospital just days ago.

The 4th season finale of Six Feet Under really resonated with me tonight. Life has pain in it, but pain is nothing next to the infinite possibilities of life. Maybe watching Six Feet Under, Carnivale, and X-Files on my Netflix queue has been coloring my thinking lately. A little comedy, morbidity, tarot and conspiracy is a damn interesting mix to live in.

If there was a major arcana card that I emobdied, it would be The Fool. I stumble through life blissfully unaware of most of the pitfalls. I don't plan ahead. I make snap decisions. I listen to my gut more than my head. I do what I will and let the chips fall where they may. Sure, it's gotten me in trouble before, but I don't regret much of it. I could have made a lot of wiser decisions, but only a few of them would I actually want to go back and change, and they are pretty much small, stupid decisions that had much larger consequences than I could have imagined.

So, if you're feeling a bit down, come dance along the edge of the cliff with a dog nipping at your heels with me. It's fun, I promise. :)

11:46 am: What I want to see
I want to see a spoof of Battlestar Galactica done using tortoises. It will be called Battlestar Galapagos and feature Edward James Slomo and Mary McDawdle.

I want to see a new chai tea put out called Chai'Halud with the tagline: The spice must flow!

I'm sure there are other things I want to see, but that's all my brain could supply me with at 2 in the morning. :)

03:28 pm: My Nanny
April 22nd my grandmother died. Like my dad did to his grandmother, we all called her Nanny. I knew I wanted to say something at her funeral, but I couldn't come up with anything good. Some of it was trite. Some of it was cliche, but none of it was what I was really thinking of feeling.

The night before the funeral, I wake up at 3:30 in the morning and have the basics of what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell people what I had learned from Nanny. She was a pretty amazing woman, and I knew my parents and uncle had never seen her the way I did. So, I sniffled my way up to the podium and said:

I learned a lot from my Nanny.

I learned that my uncle Herm's real name is Thomas.

I learned my Baba's real name was Leonard.

Even though Baba was the one that worked at the cement plant, I learned about cement from her, because when she was set, it would take dynamite to move her.

Finally, I learned about love everytime I saw her.

(And for those of you playing along at home, "Baba" was my grandfather, Nanny's husband.)

06:50 am: Not So Silly Dreams
So, I'm asleep last night, like I often am, and I have a dream. Not a Martin Luther King Jr. type dream either. We're talking more Philip K. Dick meets Hostel here. To boil it down, I and a lot of other people are settling a new planet that has a red tinge to it, like when they add a color filter over the lens in Star Trek. We're all doing our settling thing when it starts to rain sharks.

Yep, that's right, it rained sharks. Sounds silly, doesn't it? It is, until you watch them biting peoples' limbs off as they fall and tearing people apart on the ground. I climb a poplar tree and right out the shark-based thunderstorm because this storm is more than just sharks. There's also a really, really strong wind carrying lots of red-tinged dust. So, by climbing a tall, bendable tree, I'm staying away from sharks and not getting knocked over by the wind.

Anyway, the rest of the dream is kind of unexciting, but now I really want to see a horror movie involving shark rain.

01:37 pm: I'm Turning Into Rygel!!!
So, while I'm washing my hands in the bathroom, I look at my reflection in the mirror.  Why not, after all?  I'm a handsome dude.

Anyway, I see four hairs sticking out of my eyebrows.  They are all dark at the tip and much lighter at the base, but not quite the white of white hairs.  I can see it now, give me twenty years, and I'll have eyebrows that look like toothbrushes, my eyebrow hairs pointing wildly in every direction.

I wonder how much the prop they used for Rygel to comb his eyebrows would cost to buy?  At least I could groom them with style.

12:31 pm: Am I Gonna Have To Choke a Bitch?
So, along with academic classes, I'm taking a self-defense course for 1 credit.  It's part of my wellness requirement.  It's taught at a karate dojo in Woodbridge.  http://www.niagarashobukan.com/ is the website.  The sensei there is fun but takes the class seriously, which is nice.  Last Tuesday we were choking each other.  I mean seriously trying to choke each other.  It was to teach us about panic and how it affects our reactions along with how to defend ourselves from being choked.

Funny thing was, it reminded me of a dream I've had a couple of times.  It goes pretty much like this:

Someone kidnaps sarillorn, and like any red-blooded American male, I decide to track her down myself without any help from the cops or FBI or even the milk man.  It ends up with me questioning a guy by choking him until he agrees to tell me what I want to know.  The only problem is, I always end up choking him until he passes out, then I make some comment like, "Damn, now I have wait for him to wake up!"  I know, I'm ripping off Marcus from B5.  My dreams are not original.

Another good example of my unoriginal dreams is my dream from this morning.  Ritsa and I had to perform a dance, so we decided to perform the number from Dirty Dancing.  Yep, the soundtrack to my dream was "(I Had) The Time Of My Life."  (I hope I never feel that way again.)  Then, while we were dancing, someone figured out we had won the lottery.  I pulled out my ticket, and there they were, all the numbers.  We were millionaires!

Did I mention I watched the first disc of Lost season 2?  You know, the one that shows Hurley winning the lottery?  Yeah, my dream was Dirty Dancing meets Lost.

Speaking of Lost, is it wrong that I want Hurley and Kate to hook up?

12:45 pm: Best Zombie Movie Evar!
I'm talking about Children of Men!  Blood, guts, severed arms!  And non-living people!  Lots of non-living people!

Well, non-living people if you use the definition of a living organism that requires reproduction.  See, since no one in the world of Children of Men could have children, they couldn't reproduce.  And since they couldn't reproduce, they couldn't be alive.  So, since it's a movie with a lot of dead people walking around, it's obviously a zombie movie.

Maybe I should pay more attention in my logic class...

Anyway, the movie is fantastic.  It's grim and gritty, like Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down grim and gritty.  I really hesitate to call it sci-fi, since really it's a movie set 20 years in the future and tries to answer the question:  What would happen if we couldn't have children?

It's a really, really good movie.  Go see it.

03:16 pm: So as not to confuse almost everyone on my friends list...
... some school-related posting!

Yesterday we discussed the point of Tangency.  Then, I dealt with the Square of Opposition, which has to be pretty much the best name for a game show ever.

So far every week I've heard someone on their cellphone complaining about some boyfriend or girlfriend.  I'm so glad I don't have to try to date any more.  And for those of you that do, good luck.  You have my best wishes.  :D