The Life Experience ~ Winter '16

What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice

• The Mythbusters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage did not get along. Which the media is treating as a surprise, when really it seemed pretty apparent from the show. This is, of course, just the impression I get from watching it, but Jamie doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who gets along with ... most people. Not that he's not extremely cool. He just seems less than sociable.


• Cat hormones are powerful stuff.


• My sense of sci-fi was shaped rather strongly by the Star Wars "Tales" books. Which still hold up quite well--most of the stories are damn good.*


• Also, I am apparently totally used to the unspecial editions of Original Flavor Star Wars--as evidenced by my watching my Special Edition DVDs and being extremely disoriented by them.


• It is possible to not only do steampunk elves well, but amazingly well. Looking at you, Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor.


• Self-cleaning litterboxes are pretty useful, but sometimes your cat might pick fights with the one you buy.


• Contact lenses are better when you've got liquid to revitalize your eyes through the day


• Mass Effect is a good game--which I knew--but it's also a really smart game.


• Mormon temple interiors look surprisingly like assortments of vaguely-Victorian living rooms.


• Lucy likes having her pin feathers scratched, unless they're still sensitive or blood feathers.


• Female great horned owls sound slightly higher pitched than males, at least assuming that hooting owl in the cottonwood trees is one.


• This particular brand of Fukitol supplement apparently doesn't keep me off the hypomania.


• Sleep paralysis doesn't necessarily mean that you're half-awake; it can be a dream and still have all the symptoms.


• I have discovered something shocking about myself, and I must confess it all to you: I am an axis-inverter. Not just the Y-axis; I intuitively invert the X-axis. At least in Xbox games. I AM SORRY, OKAY?


• Astrology is horse shit, but I didn't realize how desperately complicated the horse shit was.


• SHARKANOES ARE AN ACTUAL FOR REAL THING


• There might be nitrogen ice volcanoes on Pluto! No word on whether it is full of ice sharkanoes.


• David Bowie did not have heterochromia; he had a permanently blown pupil (aka anisocoria), supposedly from a fight he was in.


• Caroll Spinney and Jim Henson not only met in Salt Lake City; they specifically met in Kingsbury Hall! Which he realized when he made an appearance at Kingsbury Hall recently. He was pretty thrilled to realize he was back where he'd started.


• Gravitational waves are detectable!

*Except Dannik Jerriko. It's a source of serious annoyance to me that the impressively well0put-together plot of Tales from Jabba's Palace hinges on the machinations of that self-impressed stuffed shirt of a snot vampire and his fucking prose poetry slams.