Month: May 2007

So it turns out that I had some sort of flu. I say “some sort of” because I have difficulty believing that’s what it was even though everything points in that direction. My head was swimming for a few days and that was it – I guess I expected something more dramatic. Although Saturday night’s experience was bad enough, thank you very much. But the rest of the time was just me avoiding too much work and drinking plenty of fluids. Sounds like an average day for me…

What pisses me off is that I couldn’t make it to see The National and The Broken West Monday night. Fortunately I’m only out about 50 bucks, but thanks to the crappy rules of will call there’s no way I could have sold the tickets. Thankfully everything went south before I even had a chance to find people to take the 2 extras I had, because it would have been extra sucky to screw someone else out of the show at the same time. Argh! And to top it off, The National are still playing 2 more shows, but they’re sold out – and me listening to their latest album is easing the pain either.

Anywho, I’m back on my feet and hopefully ready to return to my serious blogging career. I hear I was in a wedding in Ohio or something…

Yesterday, the Woman and I headed over to the in-laws for a Memorial Day/”everybody’s born around the same time” gathering. All was going well with much good food and much good conversation filling the day. And then something strange happened.

Near the end of the night I got a little dizzy. It started when her nephew… well, I guess he’s my nephew, too… was spinning around in circles in the living room. Someone joked that he was going so fast that it was making us dizzy just watching. And, sure enough, it was. No big deal. I shook my head to clear it and started to get ready to head out. But my head never fully cleared. My steps were a little uneven, and moving my head disoriented me.

Stupidly I figured the car ride home would be fine and I would be over it shortly. I guess it was fine, but I had to be careful even checking my mirrors to fast. By the time I got home, I had to confess that I was losing my balance and feeling out of it. It was pretty obvious when I had trouble walking in a straight line up the pathway. The rest of the night was largely spent with me trying to sit as still as possible so as not to send me spinning out of control. In other words, imagine being drunk but without the benefit of alcohol to kill your sense of how terrible you fell.

From what we can tell, it was some sort of perfect storm of causes – dehydration, overheating, moving heavy furniture in the morning, etc. – that rattled my head with a bout of vertigo. The Woman got me through the night, but unfortunately it’s not something that goes away quickly. So my plans for doing lots of yard work this holiday weekend have gone swirly, and instead I’m spending today and tomorrow primarily sitting still staring at the TV.

Hopefully I’ll be able to walk straight enough to make it into the City tomorrow night for The National and The Broken West. At the very least, maybe I can sit in front of the computer long enough to get some photos processed – yeah, right!

Deflector

Draw a line. Deflect incoming fire back at enemy. Repeat for the next 5 hours… (thanks to Neatorama)

(A real update will follow. Promise.)

Before my tabs just explode, let’s see what goodies are out there.

• For starters, if you’re not reading Neatorama you should be. Not necessarily the fastest to get the links, but the writers there get most of the goods and actually write about the sites rather than just pointing to them. Check out this list of must see videos on Videosoft.
• I also recommend keeping up with Your Daily Awesome, because with all of the crap on the Internet you need someone to lead you to awesome album covers, awesome architecture, awesome ninja moves and awesome commentary on awesome book covers?
• You know what else is awesome? Batgirl threatening to let Batman and Boy Wonder bite the big one to strike a blow for equal rights. (thanks to jonsonblog)
• Jeremy Zawodny posted this riddle which has been bugging me for awhile as I forgot the 4th question in the sequence. Give them a try, because they’re actually a fun test of your reasoning skills – the first time I ever heard them I missed the first one but then got the next three.
• Tim Bray asked what people thought the Twentieth Century’s most iconic piece of design was, provoking a lot of interesting responses (just ignore the suggestion of the iPod) and showing just how ubiquitous design is.
• I’d say that this site is DEFINTELY one of the best uses of an URL. It opens up so many possibilities. (thanks to Seth Godin)
• For now I’ve got Windows Vista running again for my home machine, but when the time is right I see a Sable from system 76 in my future. Just because I don’t want to build my next system, doesn’t mean that I want just another pre-built Windows box – even if Dell will offer Ubuntu, too.
• How bizarre can life get for a washed up one-hit wonder and his disappointed wife? Hopefully Frank & Cindy will eventually see a real release and we can find out.
• Anyone else ever get bugged by the arbitrary nature of the 0.08 BAC limit for DUIs? No, I’m not suggesting that drinking and driving is just fine, but I have absolutely no clue at what point I hit that limit. Rob over at Cockeyed.com tested out a breathalyzer during a party and showed just how difficult it is to judge your intoxication level.

A coworker/friend was talking about experiencing déjà vu, and the idea that it’s an indication of us experiencing the path that we’ve already chosen for ourselves. Then she was wondering why she would have chosen the path she did – wouldn’t you pick something better?

friend: Do you think you choose the path, or just points A and B and the path can be anything that gets you there?
me: You mean, maybe I chose to die a millionaire and didn’t care about the path, thinking I’d be rich my whole life? But in reality I’m just going to always be like this and then hit the lottery the day before I die?

The lesson here is don’t try philosophizing with me…

The official “Free Paris” petition currently has 18,152 signatures. The slightly less official “Jail Paris” petition currently has 33,502 signatures. I just can’t make up my mind which side to join, can you? I mean, they both make such excellent points…

Is this a weird topic? Of course it is. But dammit, I’ve got some Pat Benatar blasting in the office, and I need to know. So, tell me: is Michelle Pfeiffer a good actress?

In his The Ten Worst Superhero Movies of All Time, Jess had the audacity to claim that Miss Pfeiffer can’t act. Bah! some people were wont to exclaim. She is dynamic! Well, in reality these were comments on a blog, so they were mostly, “You must be f’ing retarded!” I was torn on whose side to take: on one hand you have typical, mindless, Internet trolls and on the other you have a guy willing to trash Shaq Diesel’s performance in the epic Steel.

Granted, listing Grease 2 as an argument against her acting prowess is like trying to trash De Niro’s career for Rocky and Bullwinkle, but is it merely an exception or the rule? These are the questions that keep me awake at night, people!

As I scrolled down the list of the rollicky catwoman’s movies, I suddenly came to a realization – she really hasn’t done anything. I mean, she’s made a few films to receive notice, but outside of looking hot in black vinyl, I can’t recall anything worthwhile she’s done. Should I be calling her out as a hack, or does she get a passing grade for her looks, the crowd-pleasing “Ladyhawke”, and a bit part in the classic “Amazon Women on the Moon”? Please, I need answers!

As the Woman and I were getting ready for work this morning, she glanced out the window and noticed a deer in our backyard. There’s really no better way to start your morning. Well, unless that deer is followed by two more who wander out to start grazing on your “lawn”. I put the word lawn in quotation marks, because I’m pretty sure a stretch of ground needs to be at least 50% grass-covered to qualify, and I think that may be a little too high for the current state of the back.

Back to the deer. The first time we saw any in our backyard was the Monday morning after our wedding. That’s right, our first morning in our house as a married couple and we saw a deer and her kid seeking shelter on our unkempt property. After I left that morning, the Woman even got to watch the momma deer nurse her young ‘un. Amazing.

This morning, the three deer were moving back and forth between our yard and our neighbors, looking for choice greens. I managed to take some photos after cracking a windows open just a few inches. When I tried to approach down the side path, the lone remaining deer heard my clumsy footsteps and stood up in a completely unmenacing way. Nevertheless, I soon envisioned myself becoming the first person in the neighborhood to be mauled by a freakin’ deer. So I let him be.

Every time I work on our yard (which is, like, twice a year) I think about how much it needs to be cleaned up. Clearing out a lot of the… brush is the only way to describe it… would make it so much more inviting for humans. But for now I prefer it being more inviting for wildlife. That’ll change when we plant some veggies and suddenly we find ourselves chasing off those “pesky” deer. 😉

I used to follow the box office reports somewhat regularly. I was fascinated by what it took for a movie to really make a lot of money. Most people don’t really get what a phenomenon something like Titanic was and that, no matter how many times you read those Harry Potter books, nothing is going to come close to touching it for quite sometime.

But it’s become just silly over the past few years. The fact that the movie industry hates to reveal how many people are actually seeing movies just shows how much of a farce it is. They rely on the total money brought in, and hope that people don’t realize that increasing ticket prices from $9 to $9.50 will increase that number even if less people see a movie. But it must be popular! Look at how much money it made!

This week, as you are bombarded with news clippings about Spider-Man 3 shattering all kinds of records, just take a quick look at the real numbers. Am I really supposed to be impressed by a movie that grossed about $12.5 million more than the previous record holder when it opened on about 1500 more screens? And this isn’t me being bitter or anything – as much as I loved the first Pirates of the Caribbean, I still haven’t seen the “record-breaking” sequel yet. And as much as I dislike Spider-Man, I enjoyed the first movie and want to see this one in spite of the turd-fest second sequel as it’s got the lone awesome character from that comic: VENOM!

Ugh, I hate becoming a crotchety old man, but I sure do miss the days when you had to pick which theater you were going to because not everyone was playing all of the big releases. And when the 10 screen multiplexes finally showed up, they weren’t using 6 of the screens for a single movie. Remember those days when movies laster longer than their opening weekends? And yet the industry wonders why more people just wait for it to hit DVD – the theater experience just flat out sucks these days.

You pull up to an intersection. You find yourself sitting at a red light. The red light tells you not to go through the intersection. But you want to be on the other side of the intersection. You want to go through the intersection even though the red light is clearly telling you to stay put. Surely the red light will change to another color. One that will indicate you are now allowed to pass through the intersection. One that will let you continue on your way.

And so you must be ready. You must be vigilant. You must make sure that you can advance at the exact moment that the light tells you – the instant that it no longer hinders your progression. And so you ease forward. Slowly. Painfully. Perhaps illegally. You are jealous of the people that are already able to proceed, as the red light is not directing them at this time. But you must remain focused for the precise moment at which the time will become yours. Inch by inch you proceed. Past one white line. Then another. Then another. Seemingly in defiance of the red light you are now halfway into the intersection. Perhaps you are breaking the rules, but the timing must be exact. And so you continue.

And then a thought occurs to you: What if the red light isn’t going to change? What if all of this creeping is for naught? What if your path through the intersection was an impossible task? As your brain ponders the possibility that all of your effort will be wasted, you see the person next you speed through the intersection. Hey, look at that – the light turned green!

—
This short story was brought to you by the guy in the car next to me on Bloomfield Ave this evening, who was so anxious to gun the engine during the red light that he forgot to actually hit the gas when the light turned green. I’d be more amazed if I didn’t see this happen so frequently. You know, except when the guy decides that the light actually isn’t going to change and just blows through the red. Yes, I am easily amused (and frustrated) by drivers around me.