Category: Cool Stuff (Page 1 of 9)

Script for the Fall of Atlantis, Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas

August 2, 2019 / / 0 Comments
forum shops atlantis jeff green

Every year for what seems like a decade we’ve been going to Vegas in the summer. My husband has a conference and we tag along. And every year we go to the Forum Shops at the Caesar’s Palace and watch The Fall of Atlantis fountain show. It may be 1960s technology and cheesy, but the animatronics are still pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to understand the show at all. The sound is really, really, really terrible. Dramatic, sure, but it turns the voices incomprehensible.

For years I’ve looked for a script for the show so I could understand it. I’ve written to Caesar’s asking for it to no avail. Fortunately, this year I found a YouTube recording of the show that has the actual script. The guy who subtitled the show took the trouble to watch recordings of the show carefully and then wrote it down. I’m not sure it’s 100% accurate, but it’s close enough and I’m glad that this year I can watch the show, script on hand, and finally understand it.

Here is the script:

Pay heed to Poseidon, he rules our seas divine.
He shakes the core of olympus.
More rain is his warning.
Honor the gods and all their might
Watch their Magic fill our void, to bless this special night.

Behold this vision. The story of Atlantis will show you the truth.

Atlas, king of Atlantis, has arrived.
Listen to him speak of his city’s ruin.
His kingdom was destroyed by foolish pride.

ATLAS

I once faced a decision, which destroyed my precious land. Our magic crystal, source of our strength, was brutally extinguished. Re-live my story, here in your form. Behold our crystal, powerful and right jewel.

From my children, I must choose a successor. But power has seduce them. I have lost command. They misuse our magic crystal. They destroy our precious land.

Alaia, daughter of water, rules the ocean and the rain.

Gadrius, son of fire, wields the fury of all flames. I call on them now. Alaia, grace us!

Wielding an angry trident, she stabs the tank, coaxing the waves to dance. Her eyes are the color of the sea’s greatest waves. Her head is dusted with gold from the ocean’s floor.

ALAIA

Dear father, I deserve your throne. Choose me! I quench deserts by tickling the sky, I put out fires with a wink of my eye. Come out, you brother, from wherever you hide. Try to survive the wrath of this tide.

ATLAS

Be still, Alaia. Put your childish ways to rest.

Gadrius, my son, come forth now!

Behold Gadrius. His fingers are made of flint. His eyes are the color of flame. His heart burns of ambrosia orange.

GADRIUS

Hail father! Choose me to inherit the throne. My fire conquers the darkest night and kisses each day with brilliant light.

Poor, poor sister, your precious ice is melting.

ALAIA

Dear Brother, your force is a weak threat! I have plucked this wave from the earth’s edge. I’m the only one fit to rule this land.

ATLAS

Stop this evil rage! Cease this mad war. I beg you, my children! Destroy no more!

ALAIA

Give in brother, before you fade to nothing.

GADRIUS

Poor Alaia, your strength deceives you. My fire angers your water.

ATLAS

Gadrius, Alaia, Stop this madness!

GADRIUS

I rip this beam from the sun and lace it with Hade’s breath.

ALAIA

I seize the windstorm and spite you with pelts of sleet

GADRIUS

Ha! Your water turns to mist to disguise you perfectly. Surrender! I will smother your sea creatures.

ALAIA

Cease! I will prow your stars!

ATLAS

Titans! Our magic suffers under your brutal attacks! Hear me, children! Cease this madness!

I cannot choose one child above another. Good people of Rome, I put the choice in your hand. Choose the heir to my throne and cease this foolish fight or we’ll find this precious land robbed of day and starrry night.

Gadrius or Alaia. Please, help me choose. Speak up, choir! Riase your voices if Alaia should be queen!

GADRIUS

Your votes are useless. Soon you will see this mighty kingdom will belong to me.

ATLAS

Now you vote if Gadrius should be king.

ALAIA

I won’t forget this. If you dare, and I’ll put a tornado from this thin night air! Gadrius, what a pity, it seems they’ve chosen me over you.

GADRIUS

Do not deceive yourself. They voted that I should be king.

ATLAS

Oh great Gods! Forgive me! My children poison this kingdom with greed. It is a cold, black day for Atlantis, indeed!. It is too late to halt this evil war, and so the gods shall settle with a storm.

ALAIA

With the cruelest rainstorm this world’s ever seen, I will silence you forevever so that I shall be queen.

GADRIUS

Not before you collapse to my fiery steel. I will burn you, Alaia, and they I will be king.

—
I have come to end this ambitious fight. Now I see the fate on this land. The rest of this earth is my duty to save, so I’m forced to send Atlantis to its watery grave!

The sun and the sea, in one swift beat, shall finish this war with water and heat.

—

You have witnessed the fall of Atlantis. Remember the vision, learn and take heed.


And here is the subtitled show:

Surprisingly, it’s easier to understand the show by watching a recording than by being there in person. This version has the best audio I’ve found:

Xmas Presents

December 26, 2014 / / 0 Comments

This year, Christmas for me was not a cornucopia of presents.  For one, my sister Kathy didn’t come home so there was nothing underneath from her or my parents.  For another, I neither asked for much nor made much of a deal about Mike getting me anything.  Therefore, I feel free to write about the great presents I did get, without having to feel the shame of participating in unabashed consumerism – or at least, of owning up to it.

So this is what I got.

IMG_1906Mika got me these gorgeous owl earrings and at the San Francisco Zoo no less! She got Camila some gorgeous elephant earrings as well.

She also got me a homemade card with the words of the Backstreet Boy’s song The Perfect Fan

The San Leandro main library has a tiny gift shop run by volunteers.  They always manage to have cute, unique and reasonable price items.  I don’t go there too often anymore (e-books be damned!), but during a recent visit I spotted a few items items I did like. I pointed them out to Mike and he got me a couple:

IMG_1908 IMG_1913IMG_1907A very cute gold & black necklace.  I think it was supposed to come with earrings, but it didn’t 🙁

A messy chain necklace with matching earrings. Yeah, I’m probably too old for it, but who cares?  🙂

 

leathergloves

 

Mike also got me a new pair of leather gloves, as I lost my last one.

I like listening to history lectures on YouTube before I go to sleep, and somehow I came upon some lectures by Timothy Snyder, a historian of 20th century Eastern Europe.  Snyder is incredible – both as a scholar and as a lecturer -, and I quickly listened to anything by him I could find on YouTube.  From there I graduated to his magnum opus Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin  I had it out of the library for over a month, but it’s a long and emotionally challenging book (I’m haunted by the images of roving bands of cannibals hunting little children during the holodomor, and then things get worse) so I couldn’t finish it. I asked Mike to get it for me so I could read it at my own pace.

Camila, meanwhile, made me a beautiful collage.

I didn’t think that I hadn’t really given myself a present until too late (though I did get some clothing, cooking equipment and tea on sale), so I’ve decided to splurge by getting a couple of subscription boxes.  I already ordered a Petit Vour box, just for the thrill of getting a surprise at a low price ($15 a month), but after doing more research on subscription boxes, what I really want is a GlobeIn Artisan Box.  GlobeIn is a marketplace for artisans worldwide, you can go on their website and buy a clay onion container, from an artisan in Russia, a hand-knitted horse poncho from Mexico or a handmade small yurt from a yurt-maker in Kyrgyztan trying to jump star his business.   But you can also get a mystery box for $35 a month including shipping, and that’s what I really want.  I may very well order it for myself, but I’ll wait to see if the come up with any more “first month free” offers.

Save Money with Paypal Shipping

July 4, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been auctioning off some stuff I’ve found around the house while cleaning, which means I’ve had to research what’s the cheapest way of shipping things.  It turns out to be through Pay Pal.

If you go to their not-so-secret URL, you can enter your shipping information, pay for shipping and print labels to attach to your packages – which you can then hand off to the Postman as if you were using stamps.

What’s surprising is that it’s /cheaper/ than using stamps PLUS you get tracking for free!  Mailing an 8oz package with stamps costs $2.80 plus 75c for delivery confirmation.  Sending it through Pay Pal is only $2.48!  If you send one package, you may only save yourself a dollar – but it could add up if you send many.

Their special prices seem to apply to services other than first-class mail, I noted that their media rates are cheaper as well.

You do have to have a Pay Pal account (I’d cancelled mine after the Wiki Leaks incident, but I had to re-open it).

 

Facebooks How To’s

March 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

There are often things I want to do on Facebook that FB tries to stop users from doing.  Fortunately there are people out there trying to best them, and I’ll be posting here some of the things I’ve tried to do, and what worked.  Note that FB changes its site frequently, so tricks stop working from time to time.

INVITING ALL FRIENDS TO ONE EVENT

Regularly, Facebook forces you to click next to the name of the friend you want to invite to an event.  You can force your browser to click on all the names by using the javascript below.  Note that it didn’t work for me using Firefox (it said something about FB disabling it to keep social engineering away), but it did work perfectly in Opera.

This is what you do:

– Go the page of the event you want to invite people to

– Click on “Invite Friends” on the top right-side of the window

– A pop up window opens up with the pictures/names of your friends. This window only displays a few friends at a time.  Scroll down to add more.  Continue scrolling until all your friends are shown.

– Copy this script:

javascript:elms=document.getElementsByName(“checkableitems[]”);for (i=0;i<elms.length;i++){if (elms[i].type=”checkbox” )elms[i].click()};

– Paste it in the url bar (replacing the url of the page you are in).

– Click “enter”

– Wait until the squares by the pictures of all your friends are clicked (it can take a few minutes, depending on how many friends you have) and then press “submit”.

 

You are done!

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