Stuff

I can't wait for The Simpsons movie!! I don't know if I'll get to see it this weekend or not, but hopefully it'll be soon. I even put a Simpsons band-aid on the blister I got on my ankle when I went hiking wearing my shoes that are too small. It was about 15 years old and probably coated in bacteria which is probably the reason why I'm in excruciating pain every time I bend my ankle, but I had to keep with the theme.

Check out how much the Kwik-E-Mart 7-11s sold:

960,000 cans of Buzz Cola
1.1 million Squishees
880,400 Sprinklicious doughnuts
More than 3.4 million units of Simpsons swag

It's not surprising though. How can you resist a 3 for the price of 3 deal?

Speaking of my hiking, I think I might start running again. I ran a little bit on Sunday when I was out and it was fun. I couldn't run too far though, because I wasn't wearing a sports bra and I'm a little busty. It was like a scary, unsexy episode of Baywatch. I'll need to buy an MP3 player though; I can't run without music and I don't think bringing my Walkman along will do anything to increase my already hopelessly low coolness factor.

Check out this video of an entertainment reporter interviewing Holly Hunter. Awkward! Rusty, you probably shouldn't watch.

Shit! Why does YouTube randomly not let me embed videos sometimes?! Here's the link.

I started reading the first Harry Potter book. I'll let you know if it lives up to the hype.

HAHAHA

I've seen Lego Thriller and Indian Thriller, but I think Filipino inmate Thriller takes the cake.

7 Random Things

I was tagged by March

1. I'm with March on hockey being the best sport to watch (hell, it's the only sport I care to watch), but tennis is my favorite to play, even though I suck.
2. I have an ugly scar on my left index finger. When I worked in food service I was holding a bagel in my left hand as I was cutting it (don't ever do that) and sliced right through my finger. I did the exact same thing the next day. There are lab rats smarter than I am.
3. "Six Feet Under" might be my new favorite TV show (besides the Simpsons which has supreme, never-ending #1 privileges). I don't know if I'd put it ahead of the UK Office of season 1 of the US Office, but it's definitely better than seasons 2 or 3.
4. I don't like beer. I've tried to like it, but I just don't. It tastes like piss. Give me liquor or wine.
5. I hate bacon and sausage. I can eat bacon in broccoli salad for some reason, but other than that, I won't touch them. The smell of them cooking makes me nauseous and I can't even look at sausage without feeling like I'm going to hurl.
6. I'm really good at holding prestigious titles without doing any work. I was a section editor in the high school yearbook and was vice president and president of the national Spanish honor society in college. I spent about 3 hours tops doing work for all these posts combined.
7. I'm scared of bumper cars. I'll ride the tallest and fastest roller coasters, but bumper cars freak me the hell out.

Vacation

I'm going to visit Rusty from Saturday till Tuesday. It feels sooo nice to know that I don't have to go back to work till next Friday. I hope everyone has a good weekend and week! I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to tell when I get back.

If you're looking for the Centralia pics, they're down below. I put everything in order due to my OCD.

Guilty Pleasure Saturday #10

Umm, yeah. Remember this? Unfortunately I wrote all the GPSs in one sitting and when I ran out I got lazy and didn't do any more. I heard the new Gym Class Heroes song, "Clothes Off," on the radio the other day. It samples Jermaine Stewart's "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off." I have an irrational love for that song. It's such a light breezy, song and it's ironic because of the fact that, as Annoyed pointed out when I mentioned a few months ago that I just realized it was a dude singing the song, Jermaine Stewart died as a result of a disease he contracted presumably while he had his clothes off. I HATE "Cupid's Chokehold" because first of all, you don't mess with Supertramp and second of all, if your boyfriend sings "Breakfast in America" to you, you should probably leave the relationship, yet "CC" is about how awesome his girlfriend is. It's the same ire I feel when people talk about how "The One I Love" is such a great love song. No. It's not. A simple lyric googling goes a long way, people. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a simple prop to occupy anyone's time. "Clothes Off," on the other hand, rocks my world. I'm not a piece of meat; stimulate my brain:



And just for fun, Gym Class Heroes:

Just Popping In...

Is it wrong, sick, and disturbing that I read about how Michael Jackson is looking for a house on the Chesapeake Bay and got momentarily excited? Yes? Ok, then...

I'm so bummed that we don't have one of the Kwik-E-Mart 7-Elevens, but that's understandable seeing as how we don't even have a 7-Eleven period. I'll either have to make a road trip to NYC or DC or make do with this review and pictures from X-Entertainment.

I leave you with a Simpsons quote:

Homer: Really, the only word to describe it is (drools)
Lisa: Hmm. What's the English equivalent for (drools) I'd say ... transcendent.
Homer: How about groin-grabbingly transcendent?
Lisa: Uh ... I don't think so.

Road Trip; June 25, 2007: Part I

Rusty and I set out around 9:30 on our road trip. Our first stop was Lemoyne, right across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. Rusty and I are both obsessed with interesting houses and there were some up on a hill that I see on my commute that I wanted to show her. Unfortunately the main house I wanted to show her was down a private drive, and if I'm going to be arrested it's going to be for something cool, so we weren't able to see the house up close. I did snap some nice pictures looking across the river into Harrisburg though.


The state capital building is in the center of this picture and obviously you can't see it here, but the roof of the rotunda is made of gorgeous green tiles that reflect the sunlight beautifully. The tall building to the right of the capital (with the sign on top) is the bank where I go when I have to deposit money for work. It's about a block away from my office.








This picture was taken looking northeast. The bridge is the Harvey Taylor Bridge and the land at the bottom right of the picture is the edge of City Island. I love the hills in the background; I could never live somewhere flat. Notice the haze; this day was hot and humid as hell. Not the best day to be wandering around outside.








The third and last Harrisburg picture is looking southeast over the city. That's the Market Street bridge, the one I take as a back way when I-83 pisses me off too much. The parking garage on the right is on an island and was flooded up to the second level last spring (?) when we had a lot of rain. The house on the right is empty; anyone can feel free to buy it for me.

Road Trip; June 25, 2007: Part IIa

The main reason of our trip was to visit Centralia. The mine fire began in 1962 as the result of trash burning. Some conspiracy theorists say the fire was started by the government because they wanted access to the coal in the area, but as much as I love a good conspiracy theory, I highly doubt that is true. There's no way to safely get to the coal underneath Centralia. Governments of all levels bungled Centralia, but I don't think it was malicious. Even though the land was taken by Pennsylvania by eminent domain and the town's zip code was revoked, people are still allowed to live there. The town received national media attention in 1981 when a 150 foot deep sinkhole opened underneath a boy who was luckily rescued. It took people over a decade to realize the extent of the damage to the town and eventually the population dwindled. In the 2000 census there were 21 people living in Centralia. I'm sure there are fewer than that today, as we only saw about 3 or 4 houses. The first stop on our trip was St. Ignatius Cemetery. There are more dead people in Centralia than there are living, and the cemeteries were very well-kept.

We could see this orthodox church in the distance from St. Ignatius. I'm not sure if they still have services there or not.


Here's the church close up.

Apparently Centralia had a large orthodox population.


This is the town square.

Road Trip; June 25, 2007: Part IIb

We weren't able to get a feel of how hot the ground really is since it was 90 degrees with a blazing sun that day, but obviously if a tree trunk becomes charred just by lying on the ground, it's pretty damn hot.


This is the municipal building. I've heard it's still in use, but no one was around.

Here are a few of the inhabited houses. The bottom picture is the mayor's house.



The best view of Centralia is on top of hill at the edge of town. Unfortunately, this area has become a garbage dump.







This building used to serve as a shower area for the mine workers.

Road Trip; June 25, 2007: Part IIc

The graffiti in the area was terrible. A lot of it was class of '07 markings. Some of the more interesting examples:






My personal favorite (I swear I didn't write this):


Part of route 61 to be closed because of subsidence. Walking down closed route 61...





Something doesn't look right...


Can you see why the road is closed?





People like to watch things burn.
















Walking away...



Some graffiti in other areas of town:



We were a little disappointed because we thought Centralia would be like a ghost town, out in the boondocks. Route 61 runs right through the middle of town and at least one car went by about every 2 minutes, so it's not really that deserted. Since we went in June, everything was really grown over so you couldn't get a good feel of the fact that this is basically a town with a street grid, fire hydrants, and power lines, but no houses. You can't see it in any of my pictures, but smoke was coming out of the cracks and you could smell sulfur. Rusty and I are going back around Christmas to catch some of what we missed and to get some good smoke pics. Centralia is a horrific example of what human carelessness can do.

Here is a good website with Centralia information. I submitted some of my pictures to them and am hoping they'll get them up. They seem to be about a month behind. They also link to pretty much every Centralia site there is. Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods briefly discusses Centralia. I recommend that book and his others; he's an excellent travel writer. This is a video made in 2002 by the Discovery Channel.