IMDb used to use a name-based system for referring to actors, but they’d long planned to switch to a numeric system like that used to refer to movies. They recently made the switch, and now there are seven-digit numbers to refer to every actor (meaning they can have up to 9,999,999 actors in the current system). I caught most of Yankee Doodle Dandy on TV tonight, and that prompted me to look up the details in IMDb. I realized that James Cagney was #0000010 and they must have actually ranked cinema personalities. This seems to me a curious way to do it, but anyway here’s what they’ve come up with:

1. Fred Astaire
2. Lauren Bacall
3. Brigitte Bardot
4. John Belushi
5. Ingmar Bergman
6. Ingrid Bergman
7. Humphrey Bogart
8. Marlon Brando
9. Richard Burton
10. James Cagney

It just strikes me as peculiar that a database that has always seemed factual and objective would go to a subjective sorting like this. I wonder if it’s based on votes somehow?

Via USA-L News comes a report from Spokane station KXLY called Officer Shot Deaf Teen. It seems high school freshman Eagle Michael made the mistake of stealing a case of beer with some friends. When police officers arrived on the scene, they asked the group to sit on the curb, but the 15-year-old seemed to be ignoring them. He pulled a BB gun out of his waistband and began waving it around, prompting an officer to shoot him in the head. I agree with his family - why was he shot in the head and not shot somewhere that would just wound him? He hadn’t obeyed the officers because he hadn’t heard them. Pulling out the BB gun was dumb, but it seems the officers could have been more sensitive to why he wasn’t responding to them. There needs to be more awareness of deafness so tragedies like this don’t happen again.

This weekend has been pretty laid-back. Yesterday A and I planned to go to Six Flags. We wanted to go to Bombay Bistro, which didn’t open for lunch until noon, so by that point it was already pretty late in the day to get started. For some reason I was very sleepy, so A drove back home and we took a nap. A few hours later A asked if I wanted to join her in a shopping trip to boring places (Linens ‘n’ Things and Bed Bath & Beyond), but I was still tired and went back to sleep instead. In the evening, I watched a rerun of Angel, which turned out to be the first-ever episode - it was a neat blast from the past to see Doyle, I’d always liked him. On her way home, A called to suggest I have a - uh, “magic” - brownie, so I did and went back upstairs to watch Enterprise. She got home before the brownie kicked in, so I helped her bring in things she’d bought - which included Hello Kitty pajamas for me! (They’re really cute, I’ll have to take a picture.) After that I parked myself on the bed and didn’t move for a long time, but I got to watch Stargate and MadTV and some other shows.

Today we did go to Six Flags, and the weather was perfect for it. It was just cool and cloudy enough that there weren’t a lot of other people there, so we barely had to wait in line for anything! We even got to go on several coasters twice without getting off the train (though we did change seats). I inexplicably got tired again, but I wanted to go on Roar so we waited in line a few minutes for that. Once we were seated and strapped in, the operator asked A to take off her glasses. Nobody else had asked her to do that on any of the other rides we’d been on, even though we’d already been through 19 inversions and nearly 30,000 feet of track so far. She can’t see without her glasses, so we got off the ride and left the park. Because I was tired, A drove back and I fell asleep on the way! (It’s less than an hour drive, but I’ve been so tired for no apparent reason.) I had a coupon for Build-A-Bear, so we stopped by the mall and I picked up the poodle skirt outfit with matching saddle shoes to be a Halloween costume for Audrey. (I also got her a plain white t-shirt just to use as a building piece.)

It’s been a long time since I’ve done any writing prompts, but the current Weekly Wrapup is about internet addiction and I feel like I really should answer this one.

1. Are you addicted to the Internet? Why or why not? If so, how?
Yes, I am definitely addicted to the internet. I’m not sure why exactly - I think it has to do with my ADHD and the fact that there are millions of things to do and see online. It’s nearly impossible for me to get bored while I’m online - there’s always something more. As for how - I honestly would be online every minute of every day if I could. I want to be online while I’m in the car, at work, everything. I get grumpy if I can’t be online for some reason at a time when I would otherwise be able to. I love being with my friends and doing things in real-life, but my desire to be online at other times is strong enough that I would definitely call it an addiction.
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I found some cool drink recipes in Arrive Magazine, Amtrak’s onboard publication. My favorite is listed as being from a San Francisco nightspot called Aziza.

Marrakech Express
1½ oz. vodka (Charbay if available)
½ oz. Kahlua
½ oz. Bailey’s Irish Cream
1 shot espresso
Shake with ice, serve in a chilled martini glass and garnish with 5 chocolate-covered coffee beans on top.

That sounds so good! I love Bailey’s and I love Kahlua, and though I’m not a fan of espresso this just sounds delicious. It also sounds like it packs a pretty hard punch - 2½ ounces of liquor!

Well the school system is back to normal today, but I don’t want to go to work. I logged on to send an e-mail before I forgot, and now I just do not want to sit there in traffic and have to work and everything. This sucks.

So we had a hurricane here. We don’t usually get hurricanes - we’re too far inland, we’re too far north - but we sure got smacked by Isabel. Fortunately, I went to New York for the weekend instead! I avoided the power outage, the phone outage, and the unclean drinking water.

On Sunday, I went to see the last Broadway performance of Big River, a co-production of Roundabout Theatre and Deaf West Theatre. (This is my second Broadway show - I saw Chicago in December.) I was hanging around outside the theater before the show, and I kept staring at a woman who looked really familiar. I was 70% sure she was Deanne Bray, a deaf actress who stars on the PaxTV show Sue Thomas: F.B. Eye. I couldn’t decide if I was right, though, so I just kept watching from afar. She was maybe seven rows in front of me in the orchestra, and I finally caught a facial expression that confirmed she was who I thought she was! She wasn’t made up the way she is on TV, and her hair was different, and she was dressed more casually, but it was Deanne Bray. My friends from my interpreting classes got there shortly before the show started.
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While at the middle school today, I had checked Verizon’s website to see about reporting my phone lines being out. The website said I should check at the Network Interface Device to see if there was dial tone, so I did when I got home. Surprise! There was dial tone at the box. After about twenty minutes of troubleshooting, I decided that the problem was with the setup in the kitchen. I don’t know if it’s the jack, the Telezapper, the answering machine, or the phone, but if I leave them all unplugged then I can get dial tone in the rest of the house. Yay! I still have a lot to do today - writing, cleaning up stuff, vacuuming, and I have to see if I have any homework for tomorrow evening, too.

I found out about Nerve’s The Unsexy List from jadedgrrl, who mentioned that “blogging your sex life” is #43. I was also amused by #11 (drinks with “sexy” names), #33 (lower-back tattoos - mine is in the middle of my back, thank you), #35 (Friendster.com), and some others.

Just an update - the phone is still out at my house, so I can’t get online from there. Right now I’m in the media center at the middle school where I was working today, but I want to get home. We did have phone service for part of yesterday, but it’s gone again. I have plenty to say - about my post-hurricane reactions, about the show Big River that I saw on Sunday, about the cat in the road last night - but I’m going to have to store it up in text files on my laptop at home. We do have power, so I can at least play games - I’m probably going to play some more Tropico when I get home. I found out about it a couple of years ago from Malcolm and recommended it to my friend C a few months ago, but he wasn’t very impressed with it so he gave me his copy this past weekend. There seems to be a fair bit of a learning curve but I’m going to work on that today (unless the phones are back when I get home, which is unlikely).

We made it through the storm just fine, with no damage to the house (just a big branch down in the front yard, which the neighbors have already removed). The cats were all locked inside, so they’re fine too. Our power has been out since 9:30pm Thursday, and our phones have been out since about 10am Friday. (I’m posting from a friend’s house.) We are fine, though.