Ricardo Montalban. Khan is one of the best characters Star Trek ever gave us. "Do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space."

ETA: And he was the uncredited voice of Claudius in the MST3K episode Hamlet! I totally did not know that! (Awesome episode, btw, if you haven't seen it.) Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I got an email from some Oklahoma Democratic organization. (Yes, there are Democrats here. Just not very many.) Here it is:

Oklahoma County Democratic Party Pancake Breakfast August 23

Hi everybody,

The OCDP's Annual Pancake Breakfast will be Saturday, August 23 at 8:00a.m at the DelCity Community Center, 4505 SE 15th St, Del City.

This annual event allows those to donate to Oklahoma County's effort to elect Democratic Candidates to Office. [...]

And maybe they'll raise enough funds for next year's pancake breakfast!

And now (in celebration of the crappy grammar that you don't even want to get me started on), hard candy for everyone!

I need an excuse to play music, since B is listening to an interview Gillian Anderson did with David Letterman last night and it's really annoying me. Yes, our offices are in different rooms now. I can still fucking hear it, and I'm going to murder him pretty soon if I don't find something to drown it out. So I'm doing the five most embarrassing songs meme, which I got from Hugo Schwyzer. The rules? Very simple: list the five most embarrassing songs you’ve got on your Ipod.

I have a bunch of truly embarrassing songs on there solely because of Mystery Science Theater. So I think I will do two lists. The first list will be embarrassing songs that are on there because I actually like them:

1. Jennifer Lopez - Waiting for Tonight (I...don't even know. I used to love this song when I was a teenager and thought Lois and Clark were SO IN LOVE and should get MARRIED and live happily ever AFTER ZOMG. And, um, I still like it. Go me.)
2. Paula Cole - Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? ("Heather Killingbeck! What an awesome name!" "I wish it could be 'Heather KillingPaulaCole'")
3. Bette Midler - The Rose (This was on the, I don't know, Ambient Dentist Office Music cassette when I was in high school and had to go to the dentist every month to get my braces adjusted. And I have liked it ever since, because I'm a giant sap.)
4. Poison - Every Rose Has Its Thorn (This is one of my favorite songs ever. I have no idea why.)
5. Verve Pipe - The Freshmen (They played it on the radio all the time when I was in high school. Can I claim nostalgia? I'm gonna go with that.)

Bonus embarrassing song: Edge of Etiquette - I Hate You (This is the song the punk on the bus is playing on his boom box (god) in Star Trek IV. I enjoy the song very much. I also believe someone should have taken away their rhyming dictionary.)

This is the list of embarrassing songs that are on my iPod because of MST3K:

1. Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Pina Colada Song) ("They don't even know that each other likes Pina Coladas? What, would they always panic and order Manhattans or something?" "Hey, Rupert Holmes wrote Timothy! That was about cannibalism! When was that popular?")
2. Zager & Evans - In the Year 2525 ("Is man still alive?" "Did woman survive?" "Can you pick your son, pick your daughter too, from the bottom of a long glass tube?")
3. Donna Summer - MacArthur Park (Someone left the cake out in the rain!)
4. Journey - Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) (Everybody! "Someday love will find you!")
5. Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart (How does the owner of a lonely heart compare to the owner of a pencil? Come on, Yes!)

Bonus embarrassing song that is totally MST3K's fault: Dan Hill - Sometimes When We Touch ("Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose." "Sometimes when we touch, the honesty's too much.")

I could also do a list of embarrassing Christian music, but let's not even go there.

Okay, now I tag everybody! Because I have that power! Embarrass yourself, won't you?

Michael J. Nelson has chronic headaches too. I've been hearing mentions recently from MST3K fans of Mike having "one of his headaches" at fan events, and these fans deciding he's really just a dick.

I would like to tell them all to shut the fuck up.

Until you've lived with migraines and/or chronic daily headaches, you have NO IDEA how hard it can be to get through the day, be nice to people, pretend everything's fine. I have a headache EVERY DAY. It's not always a migraine. Sometimes it's just low-grade pain, sometimes it's medium-grade. Those are the days I come to work anyway, pretend everything's fine, and try not to burden other people with my illness. If your idea of a "headache" is, "oh, I get one every now and then, but I take a couple aspirin and that takes care of it," your experience bears no resemblance to mine. I have a headache EVERY DAY. I can't "take a couple aspirin" every day, because (1) they don't work, and (2) if you take over the counter pain meds every day you get rebound headaches. Even if you take prescription migraine meds nearly every day you get rebound headaches. That stupid nasal spray my neurologist prescribed is supposed to have the benefit of not causing rebound headaches. But it costs ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for EIGHT DOSES and also doesn't always work.

The roller coaster ride I'm on right now is the same one Mike describes in his article:

Because there is no medicine dedicated exclusively to the treatment of chronic headaches, he gave me pills for coronary artery disease, depression, joint pain, eczema, etc. — the theory being that in studies of these medicines, some patients found that they treated their headaches. Now, if 1,000 people were given a dose of ringworm medication, I would expect one or two of them to exclaim, "Hey, I find I no longer dislike the music of Rascal Flatts as much as I used to!" That would not lead me to conclude, however, that ringworm medication cures an aversion to the music of Rascal Flatts. But then, I’m not a neurologist with the voice of Winnie the Pooh.

If you judge these medications on their ability to cure my headache, all failed. If you judge them on their ability to deliver a string of bizarre and unpleasant effects, however, then they were a rousing success! One caused my heart to slow significantly, so that if I exerted myself by, for example, walking several paces, my vision would swim (inconvenient, as walking several paces was a big part of my life back then). Another scrambled my sense of time, giving me the sensation that I was continually shifting several seconds into the future and waiting for the rest of humanity to catch up to me. For the record, imaginary trips several seconds into the future have nothing much to offer, aside from feelings of stark terror.

His headaches are bad enough that he was eventually willing to have Novocain INJECTED INTO HIS HEAD (which didn't work, by the way). Mine are bad enough that I'm taking five thousand medicines and considering having Botox injections all over my head on a regular basis.

This is not something that can be described as "one of his headaches." This is THE headache, the one that's always there, the one that you WILL NOT GROK until, FSM forbid, you have it too. Then you'll be spending your time trying five thousand different meds that might lessen your aversion to Rascal Flatts and wishing you'd SHUT THE FUCK UP about the wonderful pain-relieving powers of "a couple aspirin."

(Another good explanation of living with chronic illness is The Spoon Theory (Warning: PDF) by Christine Miserandino. She says:

Most people start the day with unlimited amount of possibilities, and energy to do whatever they desire, especially young people. For the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions. So for my explanation, I used spoons to convey this point. I wanted something for her to actually hold, for me to then take away, since most people who get sick feel a "loss" of a life they once knew. If I was in control of taking away the spoons, then she would know what it feels like to have someone or something else, in this case Lupus, being in control.

She uses the spoon theory to describe how she has to plan her day, based on how many "spoons" she has that day. Every little thing she does takes away a "spoon", so she has to plan to have enough to do what's necessary, and hope there's some left over to do something fun, all the while hoping her illness doesn't ambush her and steal all the "spoons" she was planning to use to live her life. Exactly.)

I'm currently reading a book called Better Living Through Bad Movies, by the renowned minds that bring us World-O'-Crap. It's made of paper and contains words! Intrigued? Read on!

The book is along the same lines as Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, except that the authors helpfully explain the lessons each movie is attempting to teach you. It's sort of like Inspector Gadget: "And so we learn that you shouldn't rub sand in your eyes, even though this episode had absolutely nothing to do with that."

Most of the movies they review are relatively recent (last 25 to 30 years), though I did see a handful of old ones that sounded like they could have come from the brilliant mind of Bert I. Gordon himself. (The Colossus of New York, anyone?) They also review such perennial favorites as Gymkata and Greydon Clark's Satan's Cheerleaders. Where for Mike Road House is the ultimate perfect movie, for these authors it's Red Dawn, which at least has the foresight to feature Patrick Swayze *and* include a charming scene in which the only way for Our Heroes to fix their truck is to urinate into the radiator.

You can read a bit of the introduction at the link below.

"President Woodrow Wilson recognized the enormous potential of motion pictures in 1915, when he observed, 'It’s like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true.' Of course, he was talking about Birth of a Nation, in which the heroes were Ku Klux Klansmen and the villains were white guys in blackface, so he might more accurately have said, 'It’s like writing history in the snow with your own pee, and my only regret is that I didn’t drink more beer.' Still, he makes a good point."

Enjoy, won't you?

Crossposted to mst3k.

Here is my current plan. I will go to work tomorrow from 10-2. While I'm there, I will ask June if she needs me to actually be in the office to work for the rest of the week. She will probably say no. I'll spend the time from 2 to 3 or so getting ready, and head for Shawnee around 3. That gets me there around 6, which is good because it's before Supernatural and House (this is an important factor in my thinking). The plan becomes less specific from there. I will probably stay through the weekend, see Serenity with picara on Friday and be there for Sara's birthday. I can work four hours a day using my parents' computer. So it'll be like a mini-vacation! One where I still have to do work and school, but I'm doing them...someplace else! Whee!

If I'm making little or no sense, it's because I've taken an Ambien. I feel all groggy and weird, but I can't get to sleep. So I was going to listen to MST3K on my laptop, which led to me getting annoyed with my laptop again. Also my DVD player is screwed up. So I want to go somewhere else, and get away from all these hardware problems. (I'm taking the laptop with me, but it won't be connected to the Internet so it won't matter.) The laptop's about to be annoying and overheat, anyway, and then I won't be able to listen to MST3K anyway. *is sad* My torrent has finished, but the files won't play right. The picture's all jerky. I checked the codecs, and GSpot claims I have the right codecs. I'm open to ideas, oh LJ land! I'm going to see if I can play it on picara's laptop, I guess, so I'll know if there's something wrong with the file or with my computer. I am so tired of dealing with this type of crap. SHUT UP COMPUTERS STAB STAB STAB *STAB*.

I love this meme, because I totally love hearing about people's LJ interests. Everyone, please do this meme! I will love you forever!

LJ Interests meme results

1. billy tallent:
   Hard Core Logo is a truly wonderful movie, not just from a fannish perspective either. It's DEEP yo. That said, Billy Tallent is rilly rilly pretty, with the hands and the hair and the tattoo and the smoking and the BEING TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH JOE DICK.
2. christopher buckley:
   I love Christopher Buckley's books because they're hilariously funny. I mean, Little Green Men? With the news anchor who gets abducted by "aliens" and then ends up on a crusade to convince everybody it's real? And Thank You for Smoking? He manages to make a tobacco spokesman the hero.
3. douglas adams:
   Okay, Douglas Adams. Douglas Adams is, like, the God of British humor, as far as I'm concerned. I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the shelf at the library and thought the title was intriguing, and the rest is history. I've reread the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhiker's Trilogy tons of times and can quote huge parts of it from memory. Yes, I'm a dork. But I'm *lovable*.
4. girls' bike club:
   One of the funniest writers on the Internets is Sars, and her Girls' Bike Club series is just about the best thing ever. It's for famous people who do stupid things! What could be better than that? Mocking of Tom Cruise, and Stephen King, and Dubya, and Ted Kennedy, and--just, read it!
5. hugh laurie:
   Ah, House. I <3 House so much. Hugh Laurie is pretty and snarky, which is really the only reason to watch House, as far as I'm concerned. "Bros before hos, dude!"
6. jon stewart:
   Okay, here's the thing. Jon Stewart? Is really fucking smart, dude. And funny. And hot. That is all.
7. mst3k:
   MST3K. Just--this is my favorite show EVER. I discovered it in high school, when Picara happened across it on TV one weekend. It was the perfect show for us, because we make fun of pretty much everything we watch. There was a nerve-wracking week when the VCR broke right before Thanksgiving, and we had to convince our parents to get another one immediately so we could tape the Turkey Day marathon. That would have been, what, 1997? Good times.
8. ramona milano:
   Ramona Milano played Francesca Vecchio on due South. She tends to get overlooked a lot, but I really love her. She's so very pretty and I totally have a girl crush on her.
9. television without pity:
   Who doesn't like TWoP? There are recaps! And they are funny! I watched so many shows just to read the recaps. To wit: Tru Calling (ugh), Firefly (whee!), Trading Spaces, The Apprentice. And I read recaps for some shows (*cough*7thHeaven*cough*) without watching them at all, because, yeah. They suck that much. And the recaps confirm it. There are so many smart people at Television Without Pity, and they are all obsessed with television. I find that comforting.
10. twitch city:
    Twitch City is this weird Canadian show about a guy, Curtis, who stays inside all the time and watches television all day. Callum Keith Rennie had a role in it, as Newbie the grocery store clerk, and Molly Parker played Hope, Curtis' girlfriend. This show is just bizarrely funny. Curtis' favorite show is Rex Reilly, which is pretty much a Jerry Springer type show, and each episode of Twitch City is named after the episode of Rex Reilly Curtis watches in it. So, for example, the first episode is called "I Slept With My Mother." Also, there's this thing with cats. They're, like, trying to take over the world, or something. If you haven't seen it, you absolutely must, is all I can say.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

Clearly, something very sad is going on. See, I was reading the Right of Marriage Blog. I read this sentence: "And don't forget that no less than 3 of the committee members were SPONSORS of the same-sex marriage ban last year."

Yeah, it says less than 3. Which I immediately interpreted as a cleverly amusing spelling-out of this: <3. In other words, a heart. That? Is very sad.

In other news, today at the mall I saw a guy whose t-shirt said "Look Polish Everybody." Whoo! Dorky Mystery Science Theater shirts!

I recently purchased Season 9 of MST3K on ebay, and it got here today. I watched most of The Projected Man earlier, during dinner. They're great DVDs, though I'm going to need to buy cases for them at some point. Each episode is on a separate DVD, and they've got chapter divisions and everything. Excellent. The Projected Man has tons of great riffs, and I don't have it on tape so I don't get to see it very often. Like, there's a shot of a cage with a rat in it, so Crow's all, "You know, despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage." Or the one at the morgue where they're looking at some dead robbers that are apparently notorious for having been captured several times. One of the cops looks down at this dead guy in the drawer and is all, "Man, I've seen [Dead Guy] in lots of positions. I never expected to see him like this." So Servo chimes in, "Yeah, we've been through the Kama Sutra together many times." That's, like, one of my favorite riffs EVER.

I got some of my Cataloging lab done today. It was kind of an accident, actually. I had to go meet with Dr. Lee, then I had a couple things to take by the post office. So, after the meeting I headed for the post office, but I turned left on McKinney instead of right, which is toward the mall, not the post office. So I went to Panera Bread instead to eat lunch, but the only thing I had with me to read was my cataloging assignment. So, I did my cataloging assignment. Mostly. Some of it I'll have to look up tomorrow, cause I wasn't sure how to do it.

I may have totally creeped myself out tonight, again, kind of by accident. I was reading this book I bought today at Barnes & Noble (The Mommy Myth), and it kept referring to things that happened in the '70s (that's the nineteen-seventies, not 70 AD to 79 AD). Yeah, so one thing it referred to was the McMartin Daycare case, in which this whole big witchhunt went on involving accusations of systematic sexual abuse at this daycare, all of which turned out (after many years and millions of dollars) not to be true. So I looked up the case on the Internet and found a really detailed write-up on the CourtTV website, along with descriptions of various other cases involving sexual abuse, serial killers, etc. Yes, this is kind of like the time I read all the scary urban legends on Snopes and then had to sleep with the light on. Except, the stuff of CourtTV is true. I read a story about a girl who was kidnapped and made into a sex slave and lived in a box for seven years, then I read a story about this nurse who killed a bunch of kids because she had *shudder* Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Well, my new DVD arrived in the mail today, so I decided to watch that to take my mind off serial killers. It's the new colorized version of Carnival of Souls, with a commentary track by Mike Nelson. (Also signed by him. Anyway.) Yes, this was intended to be a creepy movie, but I have the feeling it's really about as creepy as The Screaming Skull (that is, not at all). And I watched it with the commentary track. Except, yes, I was already too creeped out, so this incredibly boring movie still managed to scare me, even with Mike making fun of Lawrence, Kansas the whole time. (BTW, Erin, I tried to call you to tell you all about this movie and about how funny Mike is on it, but YOUR PHONE WAS OFF. Just wanted to be sure I made that point. Hee.)

So, I was at Hastings today, because there was this article in the November Harpers I wanted to read and Barnes & Noble had already put out the December issue. Who would still have the old issue out? Hastings, of course. And Hastings always has tons of stuff on sale, so I had to look at their bargain books. I managed to get away with only two things. One is a book called Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston. He was on the Al Franken Show a couple weeks ago talking about this book, and he presented it very well. I think he'll be good at explaining things. Anyway, hardcover bargain book, $3.99. And it's an autographed copy! Yeah, I know. It's always been my ambition to own an autographed copy of a David Cay Johnston book. (Shut up.)

Second, and this is the one I'm really happy about: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection Volume 6 for....$14.99. That's right, $14.99. I checked the Hastings website after I got home, and it's supposed to be on sale for $41.99. So, I guess they transposed the numbers or something. Eek. Anybody who's worked in retail can feel free to tell me who's going to get in trouble for this and how bad I ought to feel about it. But I just got a $60 item for 15 bucks. This collection includes Attack of the Giant Leeches, Gunslinger, Mr. B's Lost Shorts, and Teenagers from Outer Space. I haven't seen any of these, so I'm really excited.