haircolors

haircolors
Originally uploaded by soelo. My natural color is a dirty-dishwater blonde, but I experiment often.

Serenity Trailer

Serenity, the movie version of Joss Whedon's short-lived series Firefly, comes out in September. You can watch the trailer here. Can't wait...

Silent Bob Speaks

Read the blog post from Kevin Smith where he talks about getting to see Revenge of the Sith sooner than all of us mere mortals. My inner geek got a rush when I read that he loved it, and what he says about his wife is so sweet: "I love talking to Schwalbach. I can have endless conversations with her - which might have a lot to do with why I married her."

Music vs Lyrics

According to a source quoted in a SFGate article about playlists and personality, "People who were more extroverted tended to have songs in their music collection that had lots of singing ... People who leaned toward instrumental music, meanwhile, were more introverted."

Hmm, lyrics always mean more to me than a few notes strung together, and I have less than 5 lyricless songs on my HD, but no one would ever call me an extrovert.

South Park

Make yourself as a South Park Character:
http://www.planearium2.de/flash/spstudio.html

Here I am, so next time you see me giving you a dirty look on the bus, say hello and tell me how much you love my blog.

murse = the best word I've come across to describe the bags that men carry that are too small to be called bags

Earth Day

It's Earth Day, but if you can't go out and do something to help the planet, take some time to learn about it:
Oceans: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Cities: All 428 metropolitan areas with a million or more inhabitants
Mountains: Wikipedia's entry about mountains.
Flora and Fauna: Endangered Species
Planetary Observation: NASA

Recovering the Satellites

Check out this airplane graveyard on Google Maps, as well as Death Valley and the coast just south of Miami.

I'd also like to know why two thirds of the downtown Minneapolis satellite photo is all blurry. What, you can't focus from that far away? ;-)

Papal Trivia

The new Pope has selected Benedict XVI as his regnal name, but some of the previous Benedicts have had some bad luck:

Benedict V was deposed by Otto I, and Benedict VI was deposed following Otto I's death and then strangled by order of Crescentius, the son of the notorious Theodora. This was after a period of over fifty years known as the Pornocracy (literally "rule by prostitutes"), where the popes were strongly influenced by Theodora and her daughter Maroiza.

Benedict IX was given the papacy by his father, at a young age in 1032, and had 3 seperate terms due to his first selling the office to his godfather and then being deposed twice.

But all of that pales in comparison to the Cadaver Synod, in which Pope Formosus' body was put on trial nine months after his death!

RSS address

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of my blog with this URL: http://www.soelo.com/atom.xml.

Did you know

how the moon was formed? Sam's archive explains:
"...an object the size of Mars hit Earth once in the dim and distant past. Rather than simply bouncing off, the object destroyed much of both itself and Earth, causing a VAST spray of matter to be hurled off from the impact point; this matter coagulated into what is now the Moon."

Creativity, my lack thereof

One of my good friends and occasional travel buddy has started a new blog where he has already posted some hilarious stories. Reading them, plus the other blogs I read by people I actually know, got me thinking about my lack of writing talent. Yes, I got an A in Writing last summer, but that had more to do with me being able to spell, puncuate and construct sentences than my writing ability. Yes, I can tell a story or pontificate on an idea, but I usually end up saying more than I ever wanted to, and still not effectively getting my point across the way I'd imagined.
I don't usually see myself as being very creative, since I tend toward logic and order, but then I remember the obssession I had with "projects" when I was little, and how it has grown into a full fledged Quilting hobby that includes dabbling in other crafty things like jewelry making. My mother loves plants and gardening, my grandmother sews up a storm, and my middle sister has started making pillows and learning to sew, so it's certainly in my nature and my nurture. This is a good thing, since I am planning on minoring in Art.
I have a deep appreciation for sculpture, some kinds of art, architecture, landscapes and music. I love taking pictures, but they are more often of things as opposed to people. I don't cook at all, I bake very rarely, and I can't decorate my way out of a paper bag. My desk and living areas are chronically messy, but I do know where every last thing is, so that's a bonus.
Okay, gotta go celebrate a friend's birthday. More on "my most inner desires" later.

The wisdom of MIA

10 Dollar - What can I get for 10 Dollar? Everything you want. What can I get for 10 Dollar? Anything you want.
Amazon - Somewhere in the Amazon, they're holding me ransom. Hello, this is MIA, can you please come get me? … Minutes turned to hours and became our dates, when we shared raindrops that turned into lakes.
Bingo - You drink too much rum. You make me wanna run.
Bonus Track - You can be a follower but who's your leader? Break the cycle or it will kill ya.
Bucky Done Gun - Can I get control? Do you like me vulnerable? I'm armed and I'm equal, more fun for the people.
Fire, Fire - You should have been good to me, Then I wouldn't get so rowdy, rowdy.
Hombre - Excuse me little hombre: take my number, call me. I can get squeaky, so you can come and oil me.
Pull Up the People - Everyday thinkin 'bout how me get through, everything I own is on IOU … I'm a fighter, a nice nice fighter.

I bought her CD, Arular, about two weeks ago and I have not been able to stop listening to it. It's high energy, rhythmic hip-hop, which usually isn't my thing. She was born in Sri Lanka and came to London as a refugee.

On the Road Again

Last night, I returned home from six days in Dallas, visiting my sister and brother-in-law with my mom. We missed our flight back because we stopped for some food at the airport, but American got us on another flight pretty quickly. I half expected them to tell us we had to buy new tickets, since it was our fault, but we got standby tickets with no argument.

We went to the Fort Worth Stockyards, the Fort Worth Zoo, and White Rock Lake. On Saturday, I met a friend for lunch and we went to see Sahara, which was exactly what I expected. He tears it to shreds here, which is a much more technical review than I would have given, but it expresses my thoughts of the movie pretty well. I don't usually go for the action/adventure dramas, but I give them a chance when the locale and actors sound like they won't put me to sleep. We did get a very nice view of a Tuareg city, and some highly inappropriate butt-rock songs.

This friend is someone I have been talking to online for about 4 months, and this was the first time we met in person. Meeting new people is not high on my list of enjoyable things, but this time it was well worth it, since we had a great time despite the movie.

Sin City

Whoa! Violence was never made so pretty. For the last two days, all I have been able to say was, "Damn that was a good movie!", but I seem to have recovered. There were so many things I just did not expect to happen, and a few times I didn't even believe what I was seeing on screen. The surprise for me was that I didn't hate Jessica Alba. If she can pull off her role in the Fantastic Four, I'll hate her even less.