Nobody won the jackpot, but somebody in Ridgewood won $1m. http://ift.tt/1Ru7MPr
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Powerball Jackpot At $1.3 Billion – but There’s One $165 Million Winner | Patch
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They’re taking down the tree 🙁
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They’re taking down the tree 🙁
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The $800 Million Powerball Jackpot Is A Stat Nerd Dream Come True
OK, so you have higher chances of being hit by lightning twice than winning the Powerball, but you know it’s $2 and a dream… http://ift.tt/22QnkAA
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Star Wars: The Force Accounted
Just exactly strong is the Force in you: someone counted I-VI (no Episode VII spoilers) http://ift.tt/1HYoXVU
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Merry Christmas 2015!
“Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will towards men.” (Luke 2:14)
I suppose wishing for peace on earth and goodwill to all is a stretch, but that’s what this time of year is about.
Listening to Handel’s “Messiah” at the moment, and will probably listen to more Christmas music to get myself in the Christmas mood. I will try to stay away from Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you,” since it’s ubiquitous and almost tiresome for me. For some reason, I’ve been amused lately by Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time.”
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the original video, so… this is… interesting…
I was recently watching the original “Miracle on 34th Street” movie and I realized more than ever how it was a funny way to go into the whole Santa and the law thing. I’m still amazed by how Kris Kringle’s lawyer pulled it off, but considering that the burden of proof/persuasion in civil litigation is that much easier than in criminal law, plus considering it was about Kris Kringle’s sanity, so the lawyer expedited the process – well, it is impressive!
Some holiday items of interest:
NPR on Santa’s cookie and milk habit. Personally, I think that Santa really has to get over this snacking thing.
And NPR on how NORAD got into the Santa tracking business…
Over at the A.V. Club: The evolution of that Christmas thing from Saturday Night Live, “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” with Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, and Tracy Morgan, looking festive and silly. And, I mean silly – it’s goofy to watch them do that thing over the years. And I totally didn’t realize that their song (or Horatio Sanz’s song, since he did the singing with Fallon, as Kattan just held the keyboard and bopped his head and Morgan energetically danced) had a cover done by someone else (I’ve heard the song on one of the car commercials on tv, but didn’t realize that it was THAT song). Ultimately, there’s something positive to be said about silliness and Christmas.
Stay tuned: tonight on BBC America, it’s the Doctor Who Christmas episode. The Doctor has a reunion with River Song. Their out-of-time love story continues, I suspect.
Further stay tuned: the 2015 Reading List and TV List will eventually be posted.
Currently reading: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.
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The End of NaNoWriMo 2015 or Happy December 2015
And so another National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, a.k.a. November) comes to an end.
I made it at final count of 58,986 words; tentative title: “Masquerade: Starting Over” – a redo (more or less, with a slight sequel-ish element) to my last year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project. I technically “won” at 50k on Saturday, November 28, 2015, thanks to the encouragement of the folks of NYC NaNo – especially the peeps of our regional IRC chat room. I’m probably going to keep at it for a proper revision, since it’s a mess and ended with “to be continued.” (this also assumes I’ll ever learn to revise my fiction; this might the exercise that I’ve been looking for to learn to do it? We shall see!).
Anyway, Wrimos/Nano’ers – we did it again! Whether you made 50k words or didn’t, you wrote something. You tapped into creative energy, and that is good. In a world where everything’s a mess, make something positive (or positively something to you; I say that because, hey, some people like to write dystopic futures or zombie apocalypses, even though I don’t think of that as my cup of tea). That’s the spirit of NaNoWriMo!
Now, on to December.
Crap, December already?! I am so behind on writing other fiction, reading books, watching television, and resuming the war against clutter. Goodness…
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Thanksgiving 2015
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Take a moment for some gratitude; going forward, may we try to be more considerate of each other.
I’ve pretty much given up on Black Friday. (and I don’t shop on Thanksgiving; nope). But – Small Business Saturday! (and contrary to how much American Express has been promoting it, per the link there and sure, they pretty much started it, it’s not like you really need your American Express card for Small Business Saturday (Wikipedia link)).
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) update: I’m still at it. At the moment, I’m at 44256 words. It’s basically a re-write/revision of my last year’s story, with the gimmicky idea of doing the story through various points of view except the protagonist, the Batman-like character. I’ve had bouts of writer’s block, including this afternoon, since I didn’t plan this out properly at all (thus undermining the concept of revisioning). Oh well. 50k words, here I come! We’ll see how I resolve this story this time.
FC mentioned brine for turkey over on Facebook. I manage to just think about side dishes and not going into a food coma.
In the meantime, here are links to some triscribe Thanksgivings past:
Thanksgiving 2014 (where I closed with this thought: “Don’t overeat, watch the parade, and some football. But, take a moment to be grateful for what we have; we are all luckier than we may think we are.”)
Thanksgiving 2011 (which has more links to past triscribe Thanksgiving links)
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Stumbling into November 2015
Well, I guess I’ve more or less recovered somewhat from the NY Mets’ loss of the World Series to the Kansas City Royals. I mean, I was realistic enough not to expect too much, but man, I was so hoping that they could have won Game 5 and let the Royals win at home, not at Citifield. But, the Royals were indeed the better team, and at least the Mets gave us a nice run.
And, maybe next year the Mets could be next year’s Royals? (the guys who come back for a consecutive World Series and win). Who knows? Hope springs eternal!
Otherwise, I’m in the throes of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Crappy writing so far, but at least it’s (fiction) writing. If you’d like to follow along on my progress (or the semblance of it), you can check my posts over at my tumblr, under the NaNoWriMo tag.
And, unlike the contingent of our very own Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), I’m not in New Orleans for the NAPABA annual conference. FC has been posting yummy looking photos from New Orleans on Facebook. Mmm. Fried food. Thank goodness they’re only photos and so I just have vicarious calories and not real ones.
Further posting will be up… eventually. November means the return of Bond, James Bond (not that I’m planning to catch the movie’s opening weekend). And, the return of the tv series “Elementary” (season premiere – so, not to make spoilers, but the season premiere of “Elementary” basically had a crossover with “Fringe.” It felt like a weird, other dimension, in the manner of “Fringe.”). And, I’m behind on “Doctor Who.” Sigh.
Oh, well. Back to writing something.
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Fall Classic 2015
LET’S GO METS!
I still can’t believe that they swept the Chicago Cubs and are going to play the World Series. Unfortunately, I’m not the most optimistic of fans (I believe I heard today that Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts on WFAN describe themselves as “realistic” Mets fans, which I’d agree to being). I’m getting a little nervous that the Mets have such a long stretch of rest. There is an argument to be made that they’d use this to get the pitching rotation ready. The NY Times has this handy analysis about how teams that sweep in their league championship series don’t win World Series (which Kansas City Royals already experienced last year). Don’t lose the momentum; stay focused. Got to keep believing in the meantime, I guess.
Cool looking item in the NY Times, reporting the NY Mets’ win over the Chicago Cubs in the style of a 1908 article, 1908 being the last time the Cubs won the World Series. Actually, I do feel sorry for Cubs fans. The Cubs have to win it all someday.
The reality is that it’s nice that Mets baseball is fun again, and winning is a nice feeling. Enjoy it while we can!
But, because the Cubs didn’t win, the prophecy of “Back to the Future II” regarding 2015 did not get fulfilled. Well, at the end of “Back to the Future III,” Doc Brown did tell Marty and Jennifer that the future isn’t written. All we can do is, as Doc Brown said, make it a good one! (check out the little item below h/t to a friend of mine who shared it on Facebook):
Doc Brown's messageToday is the day Doc Brown sent Marty McFly Back to the Future. So here is a message for you from the Doc himself.
Posted by news.com.au on Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Meanwhile... Toronto Blue Jays vs. Kansas City Royals - still going on. We'll see who the Mets will be playing.
I have to say, I enjoyed the celebration of "Back to the Future" Day. It got a little commercialized - like with the Toyota example. But, damn. That Toyota money made for a sweet looking video (ok, extended Toyota Mirage commercial).
It's nice to think that the Back to the Future trilogy inspired a generation of scientists and engineers, and even if we don't have flying cars or hoverboards, maybe we can convert trash into energy for our cars and whatever else. (and still make Toyota money while making energy efficient and nice looking cars).
Ultimately, it's nice this movie from the 1980s, and its sequels, would still entertain us all so much.
Lots of fall movies to look forward to seeing... like the return of James Bond, and the reaction to the Star Wars trailer - well, I'm not sure what to make of the trailer, but it's not like I'm not going to watch the movie when it comes out; I do want to see what director JJ Abrams did with it. (I'm probably delusional, but what the hey; I'm even looking forward to the return of X-Files in January).
I'm behind on a lot of things, as usual. But, hope springs eternal. Maybe it won't be too long before the next blog post...I