Monthly Archives: February 2004

A monster in purple leather?

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Aeon FluxI’m not sure how I feel about this just yet. I’ve dug Charlize Theron since 2 Days in the Valley, and I’m not ashamed to admit that long have I lusted after Aeon Flux.

But the two together? I don’t see it; not exactly a chocolate-meets-peanut-butter union.

Theron Stars As Aeon Flux

Charlize Theron will star in Aeon Flux, an SF movie based on the MTV animated series, Variety reported. Lakeshore Entertainment and Paramount Pictures are financing the movie, with MTV Films and Gale Anne Hurd’s Valhalla Productions producing, the trade paper reported.

The film will shoot near Berlin in July. Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) is directing a script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, the trade paper reported.

In Aeon Flux, Theron will play an acrobatic superheroine assigned to kill the government leader 400 years in the future, in a world where humans live under a protective bubble after a virus has wiped out most of humankind. The animated series was created by Peter Chung, the trade paper reported. [source]

“Hey, fatass…”

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“…you’re going to make the plane crash!”

Add this to the list of reasons to lose weight: The National Transportation Safety Board has recommend that airlines weigh passengers and their luggage to keep planes from being overloaded.

Until now, the FAA has used a set numerical reference points (a certain number of pounds per passenger and per bag, kind of like a standard deduction for mass) for determining the safe load for planes, but the NTSB, empowered only to make recommendations and not regulations, says that it’s not enough to keep up with Americans’ expanding waistlines.

I’m sure that if these recommendations get adopted, the weighing-in with be handled with the same discretion and aplomb that the TSA has already demonstrated. :shock:

10957

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clockAt 3:29 this afternoon, I turn thirty years old.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m really not at all encumbered by the weight of “the big three-oh.” In a lot of respects, this is just another day in my life (albeit one which manages to effortlessly buoy my spirits). It lacks the same all-encompassing glee that it manifested when I was still young enough to make distinctions like I’m not six; I’m six-and-a-half.

As milestones go, this one doesn’t trouble me. What can sometimes get to me a little is when I think that I’m only just now getting my act together, or when I look at some celebrities’ impressive accomplishments and discover that they’re younger than I am, sometimes by a decade or more.

But, all things considered, I’m excited about the possibility and promise of the next ten years. :grin:

On this day:

  • 30 years ago: I was born about two miles from my current location.
  • 20 years ago: I was living in Copley, OH; in fourth grade; thinking that my dad was going to be transferred back to Phoenix that summer (we ended up moving to California instead); big-time into Transformers and He-Man.
  • 10 years ago: I was in Toledo, OH, having moved out there with my girlfriend; secretly jazzed about no longer being a teenager; working at Best Buy as a computers “product specialist” (read: salesperson); moving into my own apartment for the first time ever.
  • 5 years ago: I was dwelling in a mountain cabin in Forest Ranch, CA (and was dwelling upon the past); had weathered some of the worst of the Long Winter; went in to Chico for a birthday cake made by the ex, who said she “didn’t want [me] to be alone [that day]“; cried that night.
  • 1 year ago: I was residing here in El Centro; lamenting my utter lack of birthday spankings; mourning the death of Mr. Rogers.
  • Today: I’m still in El Centro, but not for too much longer; making jokes about how, in Roman times, this would be my “Triple-X” birthday :twisted: ; thanking the Goddess for all the wonderful people that I have in my life.
  • 1, 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now: I’ll let you know when I find out! :wink:

The marriage of true minds and same sexes

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So Bush wants a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. I’m honestly unsurprised by his announcement this morning. He’s demonstrated time and again his willingness to run roughshod over our rights; it was only a matter of time before he sought to rewrite the Constitution in his image.

But how can this not be an issue of human and civil rights?

If Bush, et al, have their way, an entire class of people will be denied the right to marry the person of their choice because of an intrinsic part of their makeup. Why is this course of action palatable to its proponents, and how is it any different than the wrong-headedness of the early twentieth century that saw blacks somehow unfit to marry whites?

I guess I don’t understand why advocates of the ban on gay marriage are so insecure in the institution of marriage that they feel it’s their sacred duty to defend it. It’s not a zero-sum game, folks: Your marriage is no less true if two men marry each other or if two women marry each other.

If two people are lucky enough to find each other and to fall in love in this world we move through, why should any of us admit impediments to their union, same-sex or otherwise?

The first time the word “llama”

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…has appeared in this blog.

I spent much of Saturday morning oversleeping (staying up ’til 2am talking with Jason will do that to me) and then taking Amber to the annual Children’s Fair. It’s part community outreach, part fair (games and prizes), part juvenile chaos. She performed as part of an after-school arts program she’s involved in (Mexican folkloric dance, complete with traditional dresses), then we did the rounds at fair for three hours.

Engineer BobAmber played in one of the bounce castles. We fed goats and a llama and a zebra. Played some of the half-assed carnival-type games that events like these have (that end up being fun nonetheless). Amber rode a camel with one of her classmate-friends that we bumped into in line. Got some ice cream. And after many repeated pleas from the munchkin, we waited in line for too long so she could ride the kiddie train - a noisy, fume-belching primary color procession of buckets named Charley the Choo Choo (which was a bit spooky, halfway through The Waste Lands as I am). A lot of fun, but very, very tiring.

While this was going on, the shop was playing host to an all-day Warhammer 40k tournament and speed painting contest. Twelve people, pairing off in each of the three two-hour rounds, playing on boards that are 4′ deep and 6′ wide, meant that the shop was quite crowded on Saturday. And since I’ve found that I don’t actually like Warhammer nearly as much as I want to, I ended up playing register monkey upon my return from the fair.

I was okay for a few hours more, but by the time darkness had arrived, my fatigue was dancing about me, counting coup by smacking me into a sleepy submission. When J offered to let me head home a bit early, I happily accepted.

Yesterday ended up being a strange sort of mostly non-activity day, most of which was spent crafting characters for Steve’s new Forgotten Realms game.

An hour or two into the process, it started raining heavily and didn’t let up for many hours. When the raindrops started coming down - this was a real rainstorm, not one of those mamby-pamby drizzlings that usually pass for rainstorms here - I was one of the first out the door to luxuriate in it all. Steve, still missing living in Seattle terribly, was right behind me, and was trailed by several other folks. J snarked, accurately so, that only in Hell would rain empty a room of people wanting to go see and feel it. :wink:

F5: Last Time

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The Friday FiveNo time like the last time. www.fridayfive.org/

When was the last time you…

1. …went to the doctor?
A year or two ago, after I developed a weird bulging-of-the-skin (No, not in that way. Pervs.) on my thumb that ended up being a case of pyogenic granuloma. Everything was benign, and all is well now.

2. …went to the dentist?
Long time ago. I’d gone to the same dentist/orthodontist for years when I was living with my folks. I moved out a year after graduating and moved to Toledo. Went to a dentist there in town and had the Worst. Dental. Experience. Ever. Suffice to say that it was needlessly painful enough that I’ve not been back to a dentist since then.

3. …filled your gas tank?
A couple of weeks ago. I need to fill it up again. I’d estimate that I fill up my tank an average of about 1.5 times per month, probably closer to twice/month when I’m going up to Brawley regularly.

4. …got enough sleep?
As a one-off occurrence? Some fairly recent weekend morning. As a regular habit? I don’t know… somewhere on the order of years.

5. …backed up your computer?
Umm… nothing to see here… move along…

[whistling innocently]

An Irrational [Number] Quiz

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You are π

Of all the irrational numbers, you are the most famous. You have many friends and fans. Like many people, non-Euclidean geometry makes you feel uncomfortable. You are involved in so many things that it seems like it would take two of you to make ends meet.

You are particularly close to the rational number 22/7. However, you and e have been called “remarkable.”

Your lucky number is approximately 3.14159265.

What Irrational Number Are You?