Peppermint Tea

As in, the sport. Although the way my roomies spend *literally* hours a day at it, you'd think hair curling would count as a sport too.

Anyway, curling. I don't get it. I watched a game once, and the announcer'd say, "And that's two points for so-and-so!" and I'd go, "Huh? Why?" Which is a shame, cause I actually thought it looked pretty cool. I know that's unAmerican of me, hating (American) football with every cell of my body, and liking curling, but it seemed kinda fun.

Could someone explain it to me? Any Canadians in the audience?
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I'm done! It's taken weeks, but I've finally finished that blasted paper! No more shall I have to wonder why Plato refers to Diotima as a "perfect Sophist" when in fact he hates the Sophists. No more shall I have to learn more than I ever wanted to know about pederasty or anal intercourse in classical Greek times. No more shall I wish I'd bought a better translation of "The Clouds" so I'd have the faintest clue what Aristophanes was talking about.

I'm done!
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...people could use the word schadenfreude in casual conversation. It's such a spiffy word. I need to find a way to work it into a discussion sometime today. That, and 'Ruffian cly thee!' So if you happen to be at UTA and some passing girl shouts out, "Ruffian cly thee!" you'll know what's happened.

P.S. I found out what 'bukkake' meant, and WR and m were right... I really didn't want to know. Ick. I think my grandmother's too young and innocent to know what that means.

If you don't know what it is, I'm not explaining it to you. Google it or something.
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Wai! I actually have two comments on my blog! I only need about 300,000 more by noon and I'll be as famous as Gleen Reynolds!

And one of them is the great Darth Misha I himself. Thanks, Random Numbers and Your Highness. I feel very special now. :P

P.S. One commentor reminded me of the difference between a 'comment' and a 'visitor'. Instapundit has *no* comments, but lots of visitors. I don't have much of either. What can I say, other than that it's exam week and my brain is fried.
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I'd like to continue the discussion Kevin and Vincent are having here on The Divine Command Theory of Ethics.

I agree with everything Kevin's said so far. But I'd kind of like to branch off on a little side topic, and give one more reason why sin is sin.

Sin is bad because it hurts people. C.S. Lewis manages to say it with much bigger words in one of his apologies, but I can't seem to find the quote, so the following is my paraphrase. Anything that God has outlawed, is outlawed because it is harmful to us. For example, hunger is a perfectly natural impulse. Food is one of my favorite gifts from God. (Oooh, chocolate...) But sin takes that hunger and twists it into gluttony or into eating disorders. Lewis has a wonderful sentence that goes something like, "Sin is doing a good thing at the wrong time or place, in the wrong quantity, to or with the wrong person." Sexual sin, likewise, is having a perfectly wonderful experience (see where Paul commands married couples to have lots and lots of hot, wild sex in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5), but having it at the wrong time or place, in the wrong quantity, with the wrong person.

Just as our existence is contingent, so is sin's. Sin creates nothing new; sin takes God's creation and warps it. Satan was created by God and ultimately subservient to Him. After all, the devil is a genius at manipulating people; where did that intelligence come from? He is the most beautiful and terrible of all the angels; where did that power come from? Existence, in and of itself, is a good thing. Therefore, there is no such thing as 'pure evil'. In order for evil to exist, it must have some good in it.
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Why is it that all my good ideas for posts happen when I'm in the shower and can't write them down? This is about the third time it's happened to me. I had a great idea that I was going to expound upon at length, but now I've completely forgotten about it. Should I start writing on the shower wall in shampoo? How would I keep the shampoo from dripping off? Is there some kind of waterproof paper out there I could buy?

In a similar vein, although I carry around a little notepad just in case I get a brilliant idea when I'm away from my computer, the ideas always seem to come when I'm driving or taking a test or otherwise unable to write them down.

Grrr.
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Two articles from MacOPINION: here and here. Kinda cute. Wish there were a Unix or Linux version, though.
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To all my (nonexistent) readers out there, I'd just like to announce that the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is awesome. Has more than you could every possibly want to know about more words than you'd ever thought could possibly exist.

Unfortunately, if you do not have the good luck to be a student at a college with a subscription, you'd probably have to pay a hefty subscription fee to access it. But it might be worth it, even at that.

I was using it to translate Middle English poetry for my History of the Development of the English Language class. Fascinating class, really. The entire poem was written in 'Thieve's Cant', a special type of slang used exclusively by thieves to elude detection by the police. Now I know that 'The Ruffian cly thy ghost!' is 'The Devil take your soul!' in Middle English slang terms. Cool, huh?
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I'd read a couple of Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler posts before but hadn't been too impressed. Maybe I'd just stumbled across Emperor Misha I on an off day or something. But if he regularly comes out with articles this hilarious, I suppose I'll just have to add him to my blogroll.
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Yay! Rachel Lucas is back! Go visit her site here.
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See this article from Peeve Farm, which talks about a picture on Tammy Bruce's webpage.

Why is it we see physical prowess and manliness as good characteristics in a President? President Bush also won major Coolness Points when he flew that jet a while ago.

I guess we tie athleticism and a macho attitude with decisiveness, courage, and conviction. That connection, I think, definitely applies in President Bush's case, although it may not in others. (By the way, how is Arnold Schwartenegger doing as governor? I haven't heard anything about him lately.)

And John Kerry definitely loses the masculinity contest. He catches like a girl. I think Hillary Clinton is more masculine than he is. Talk about strong-willed! She's actually kinda scary.
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Number one: the cafeteria food. UTA's a great school, but loses major points in the 'edible cuisine' category. One day I'm just going to lose it and I'm going to post in big letters "10 Rules for Cooking in a School Cafeteria" right over the salad bar. They'll run something like this:

1. NEVER make brocolli and cheddar soup with watered-down nacho cheese sauce.

2. The same goes for making any kind of tomato-based soup with watered-down spaghetti sauce.

3. You aren't fooling us when you chop up three-day-old meat or vegetables and hide them in the soup. Usually that's because you mix them somewhere they don't belong; 'cream of asparagus' soup is probably outlawed by the Geneva Convention and green beans *never* go in beef stew.

4. Rancid ice cream is NOT FUN. For heaven's sake, keep perishable foods properly refrigerated.

5. In a similar vein, my roommate has ended up getting food poisoning from the omelets twice this semester. What did you put IN those omelets?

6. Cook all made-to-order food twice as long as you do. Chicken should *not* be pink, the cheese on a grilled cheese sandwich should be melted, and spaghetti tastes pretty gross at room temperature.

7. Where in the WORLD did you get the idea that carrots and mushrooms should be boiled together? Are you guys smoking something illegal back in the kitchen?

8. Why do all the glasses always have spots? I just hope those're water spots. If not, I don't want to know.

9. Why does it always take at least a semester for you guys to get something fixed? The ice cream machine's been out of commission since *last* spring. And the orange juice dispenser's been broken for, what, the past three weeks?

10. The seasonal decorations are cute, yeah, but why are you spending money on Halloween pumpkins and "Good Luck on Finals" posters when you could be buying decent food?

::breathes a sigh of relief:: Okay, I feel much better now.

On to the next big peeve: group projects. Now, in high school I didn't mind group projects with my fellow AP students, because they were just as intelligent, studious, and motivated as I was. But this one group project I just finished...

Go here to check it out.

I ended up doing not only my section, but all of the main page, *and* having to nursemaid my classmates through *their* sections as well. And, seeing as I was the coordinator, I couldn't finish my work until they'd finished theirs... and of course they were still making changes to theirs about five minutes before class started.

This is why I hate group projects. If I'd done it myself, I could have done a much better job in about half the time. The end result looks like crap, and if this class ends up ruining my 4.0 GPA I'm going to be majorly pissed.
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I just updated my website a minute ago. I changed the music in the Music section, added a whole lotta links, and added a link to this blog. Drop by!
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Hip-hip-hooray! Apple's presently developing Tiger, the newest version of Mac OS X! As an update fanatic, there's nothing more fun than hearing about the stuff coming out. (Source: the ever-amusing As the Apple Turns.)

Why is it Mac users are so obsessed with having the latest version of everything? I scored major brownie points with my fellow Mac addicts when I managed to get ahold of Panther weeks before they did. I then spent two days completely wiping my two computers, installing Panther, and playing around with all the nifty new features.

That's not something you hear about much in the Windows community. In fact, most of the stories I hear about Windows concern a bunch of people who haven't updated nearly enough, and thus haven't kept up with the latest security patches, and are now spreading some dreadful virus to everyone of their acquaintance.

Which camp do the Linux and Unix users fall into? I would imagine the first, as they strike me as, like most Mac fans, inordinately fond of computers.
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Welcome to Peppermint Tea! If you want to learn a little bit about me, visit my homepage, Kacie's Universe. Or you can see my two previous (failed) attempts at blogging here: The Blonde Brunette or the imaginatively titled Kacie's Journal. This time around I hope to update regularly and convince people *other* than my immediate family to visit. Ganbarimasu yo!

As you can see, I occasionally and randomly insert Japanese words into my posts. What do you mean you don't speak Japanese?! At any rate, if you don't understand it, just ignore it. All the serious, important posts will be entirely in English.

Why 'peppermint tea'? I don't know, exactly, other than that I like peppermint tea. And it sounded vaguely cool.

To hear the British talk, tea is the solution to the any problem. "I see you've cut your arm off and are bleeding all over the floor. Would you like some tea?" Personally, I think a good long cry over a painfully saccharine movie is a better solution, but the tea idea works pretty well too.

In fact, what if I combined them and drank tea *while* I was having a good long cry over a painfully saccharine movie?! ::ponders::

At any rate, please feel free to comment on anything and everything. This is a cat-blogging friendly site, so go ahead and post ten pictures of your dear Fluffy's new kittens if you so wish. Thanks for coming by!
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