Home of the Soul Cookie

It’s been raining today, so inevitably that means that traffic has been, and will continue to be, utter crap.

See, in California, rain on the freeway means that the 90% of us who know how to make reasonable adjustments in our driving are at the mercy of the idiotic remainder, the ten percent who either

• drive bat-outta-hell style (stuff that would be dangerous even under the best of conditions), or
• drive overly cautiously, almost to the point of pavement paranoia.

The second group is comprised of those folks who see a little bit of water on the freeway and immediately drop to 20 MPH regardless of the traffic around (or behind) them, while the first is home to guys like the dick who was weaving in and out of stop and go traffic on the approach to the Bay Bridge this morning. His antics brought him within inches of my rear bumper — no exaggeration. If I was parallel parking, and had a car as close as his behind me, I would have to get out and go look to make sure I wouldn’t hit it.

Could be worse, though: I could still be in Ohio, dealing with the drivers there.

Sarah McLachlan
“World on Fire”
www.worldonfire.ca

Wikipedia says:

The video for World On Fire opens with the claim of having cost $150,000, despite the ensuing low-quality footage of McLachlan in a plain room playing her guitar. The video continues to reveal it actually cost $15, then tracking (in animated and videotaped segments) how the remainder went to enriching lives all around the globe through charity donations. It is one of McLachlan’s most political songs, intended to graphically illustrate the impact that even relatively small individual donations might have on third-world poverty.

Mike Abundo points out that (fictional character) Borat is more popular than (real country) Kazakhstan, at least according to Google Trends.

Saw The Transporter for the first time tonight, which is, admittedly, a little strange, given I watched its sequel last year.

The rules:

1. Never change the deal.
2. No names.
3. Never open the package.

The first act had the same frenetic pace I remember Transporter 2 having, but then it seemed to get bogged down in some sort of strange, vague, half-assed almost-romance between Jason Statham’s titular character and Shu Qi’s character.

Throw in a supposed double-cross that came out of nowhere (and went back there just as quickly) and a climactic action scene ripped off from (and done better in) Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it adds up to a rather disappointing movie.

My advice: Skip it, and queue up Transporter 2 instead.

Or, even better, watch Crank.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve added a new way to keep abreast of my postings here at the Soul Cookie: Subscriptions by email.

It’s a once-a-day message, sent early each morning, which includes the feed items from the previous day: Blog posts, del.icio.us links, and the occasional Flickr pic.

To sign up, just hit the link on the sidebar (just below the big-ass orange feed icon) or the one above.

What can I say? When it comes to geekly affairs, patience isn’t always my strong suit.

Saw the first episode of the new Doctor Who on the SciFi Channel earlier this year. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

But I didn’t want to wait for the episodes of the first season to air to watch ‘em, so I downloaded them from the ‘net.

And there was much rejoicing.

Soon thereafter, the Beeb premiered the new season, so naturally I had to snag each episode as they aired. Great, great stuff.

I forced myself to stop after eight episodes, though, on the misguided theory that I ought to wait to watch them on SciFi.

Yeah… like that remained the case.

(All I’ll say of the episodes yet to air: Wow.)

So, really, it’s no surprise that I’ve been stoked to watch Torchwood, the post-watershed spinoff from Doctor Who that’s just started airing over in the UK.

Man… the Internet is such an enabler.

That’s right… it’s the return of the Friday Five!

1) If you had to move 100 miles or more to the north, east, west, or south, which would you choose, where would you end up, and what’s so great about there?
Good question, particularly since I’m exactly where I want to be right now. But if the Bay Area was wiped off the map? One of these: NYC, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philly, Seattle.

2) Do you have a favorite stretch of highway or byway for driving, touring, or wandering?
No, but I always get a nice wave of nostalgia as I drive through Orange County on I-5.

3) Are you happier to start a trip or return home?
Those initial hours in which the entire trip is still ahead of you can be quite magical. So, “starting.”

4) Plane, train, automobile, bicycle, or foot?
I like driving quite a lot. For most trips I’m happy to take the car, but when the drive time starts ticking upwards of five hours, I start really wishing I’d flown.

5) Do you overplan or underplan your travels? (Assume that “no” is not a valid answer.)
Underplan. “Here’s what I definitely want to hit; the rest I’ll make up as I go along.”

Forgot to post this little gem that Cindy emailed me yesterday: Line Rider.

According to the Line Rider page on Squidoo (which has a bunch of sample video clips):

Line Rider is not a game but a toy according to the author. Basically you take a pencil and draw curves and lines on a white background. You can then press play and it launches a guy on a sled into your line drawing. The sled slides down the lines. If you make them too steep the guy crashes. If you make them too flat he just comes to a halt. If you make them just right you can get a crazy rollercoaster going on.

It’s quite amusing. Check it out.

Tom sent out an “I landed safely” email to a bunch of people, which Scott was kind enough to forward to me, as he did with the “I’m going to Iraq” email I reposted here. Seems Tom was still using an old email address for me that I’d abandoned years ago after it started receiving thousands of spam messages that weren’t getting blocked at the server level. (This just in from “Duh!” Magazine: I hate spam.)

Oh, and I’m not sure if I knew and forgot, or if I never knew (thanks to the outdated contact info he had), but Tom has apparently earned a promotion to lieutenant junior grade in the last few years. Woo hoo!

Tom’s message from Camp Slayer is after the cut.

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