Pithifications

jamespolk @ 2009-11-08T18:04:00

2009-11-09T02:10:11Z

Some more photos and write-up from our trip. Figured I'd better do something immediately to avoid doing absolutely nothing.

First, one set from the Disney cruise.

This is what it looks like to view the front landing gear of a 747 from about 30 feet directly beneath it.

This is from the boat's stop at St. Martin. There isn't much room for an airport and the landing strip for it starts literally 100 off a public beach. Most of the planes that come in are smaller but they get a couple 747's a day from Europe and we were well timed in our 15 minute stop on a cabbed round-the-island tour.

Here's a shot of that same plane a little bit farther out.

Now from Costa Rica.

A very large beetle used as a prop by a guy selling young coconuts outside a Del Monte banana processing plant on the way to our boat for getting to Tortugeuro (boat or plane is the only way to get there).

Our main reason for going to Tortuguero was to see the sea turtles (a surprise bonus was had on the cruise when a sea turtle surfaces for air just a couple feet from me while snorkeling during our St. Thomas stop). They're significant to Lani and me for several reasons so we were really looking forward to seeing them. Unfortunately, the nesting season is pretty much over by the end of October so instead we had to settle for trying to catch a nest hatching (much lower certainty of successful timing). So it was a huge bonus to go out on that quest and come across a turtle laying her eggs a couple weeks late.

We escorted her back to the sea and then it was on to find the baby turtles.

Fortunately we were successful here as well. Here, the 150 or so eggs have all hatched but the turtles are still lethargic in the nest. They'll slowly get more active and finish breaking down the walls (the hole here is there doing, not ours) and make their break for the sea (much assisted by our presence keeping birds and other hunters away).

After about 45 minutes of observation they were on their way.

I escorted this one all the way to his successful entry into the ocean. I'll assume he is one of the very few that survived more than a little while in the ocean without falling prey to some aquatic predator.

Enough of turtles (though I could have happily spent all day walking them to from nest to ocean).

Also in the Torteguero area we saw (among many things I didn't get even mediocre photos of)

1. Enough red poison tree frogs to arm an ancient Indiana Jones treasure booby trap.

2. Leafcutter ants

3. A troop of howler monkeys (not the best photo I took of them but used because of baby presence).

4. Tree-climbing iguanas (these last two photos show how much trouble I had with lens fogging due to rain and humidity).

5. A surprisingly human looking three-toed sloth

6. And, of course, lots of jungle

We then hopped over to the Pacific coast on this, our new personal best for smallest airplane used. Soon we'll have to fly our own to get any smaller. When you're flying through clouds in one of these, you do find yourself wondering just how well the pilot knows where Costa Rica's 100+ volcanic peaks are.

On that coast we saw

1. A tiger-face crab while out in the mangrove swamp. Saw hundreds of land crabs out there but this species really stuck out.

2. A juvenile boa constrictor resting in a tree. I was really hoping for some good snake sightings but this turned out to be the only one we saw all week. Closest thing to a disappointment on the trip.

3. Lots of "regular beach, not land" crabs at the beach.

4. Essentially our own private beach since we seemed to be the only guests in our section of the hotel (Hotel Arenas del Mar) where we were staying. Unfortunately, neither Lani nor I are the type get much use out of our own private beach.

5. Impressively large crocodiles. They are protected in Costa Rica and their population has rebounded on this river to around 200 per mile.

Of course, you saw one of the friendly troop of adolescent capuchins above, here are others:

A. Bob

B. George

C. Steve

D. Achmed

So those are some of the highlights from our time in Costa Rica.

jamespolk @ 2009-11-08T09:31:00

2009-11-08T17:32:56Z

We're back from our Caribbean cruise with friends and just-us trip to Costa Rica.

The monkey on the right is me:

The monkey on the left is a wild (though unfortunately not wild enough because of less than reputable tour companies feeding them) capuchin in the mangrove swamp outside Quepos, Costa Rica.

A very fun trip that I'll probably never get around to writing down.

jamespolk @ 2009-10-22T05:09:00

2009-10-22T12:13:19Z

Walking by a Barnes & Noble last night I saw a sign inside that said:

Award Winning Fiction Book Group
Third Thursday of the Month

I actually, and seriously, spent most of the 5 minute walk home from there wondering what kind of organization gives awards to book clubs and what the criteria would be.

It was quite the bolt of recognizing my own stupidity when I finally realized it was (Award Winning Fiction) Book Group not Award Winning (Fiction Book Group). Yes, some hyphens would be appropriate, but still...stupid much?

jamespolk @ 2009-10-21T06:16:00

2009-10-21T13:22:21Z

I understand that the health reform bills are long and complex legislation, but it annoys me when people make a big deal about the page count. "OMG! The senate health bill is more than 1,500 pages long!!!!! That's longer than Moby Dick!"

Have you seen how legislation is formatted? Here's the entire unformatted text of a random page:

and evaluation of models or expansion of such models under this section. “(e) Application to CHIP. – The Center may carry out activities under this section with respect to title XXI in the same manner as provided under this section with respect to the funding program under the applicable titles. “(f) Funding. – “(1) In General – There are appropriated from amounts in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated – “(A) $10,000,000,000 for the activities initiated under this section for the period of fiscal years 2011 through 2019; and “(B) the amount described bin subparagraph (A) for the activities initiated under this section for each subsequent 10-year fiscal period (beginning with the 10-year fiscal period beginning with fiscal year 2020). Amounts appropriated under the preceding sentence shall remain available until expended. “(2) Use of Certain Funds. – Out of amounts appropriated under paragraph (1), not less than $25,000,000 shall be made available each such fiscal year to design, implement, and evaluate models under subsection (b).

In 10-point Arial with 1" margins that is 11 lines of text. About 1/5th of a normal page.

jamespolk @ 2009-10-18T22:36:00

2009-10-19T05:52:01Z

Wow, I've almost gone a month without posting anything.

Spent the weekend giving the apartment a deep clean in preparation for our vacation starting on Friday. Week-long cruise with friends, then just Lani and I will be in Costa Rica for a week. Anyway, Lani's mom will be watching the cat while we're gone so that means I require a level of clean much higher than I care about for just us. Once again it emphasized just how much hair can come of just one cat. Also, that it is impossible to get it all up off of hardwood floors. Sweep, vacuum, scrub, repeat. Then walk out of room for five minutes, return, and find more.

====

On a message board I'm a member of I, in the past, have not been shy in spreading the Gospel of Homeopathy is Bullshit. It's been quite a while, though, since it was discussed. Today someone posted a new thread, specifically calling me out and essentially saying "In your face Alex! Proof that I was right about homeopathy and it curing my hayfever!"

While I was sure it would prove bunkful, I expected her link to point to some "startling" new study showing efficacy. Instead it was just to this HuffPo article by homeopathy guru Dana Ullman.

Nothing new at all. How boring. But I'm sure I don't have enough self control to just post the initial replies and then walk away. But since she specifically called me out, I'm not feeling a need to rein in the sarcasm. Regardless of how that weakens my argument.

====

Zombieland was very fun. One action at the end didn't really fit in and was a bit of stupidity I wish had been exised but still a lot of laughs.

Whip It was enjoyable. Good performance from Ellen Page. Competent direction from Drew Barrymore. It really would have helped if the story structure had not been an exact replica of what we've seen in boy-centered sports movies for 40 years. "What it is, see, is Billy Elliot but you see it is a girl who wants to do something unfeminine!" Still good, but also rote.

Giant is a 1956 "epic" starring Rock Hudson and Michael Jackson's girlfriend (her name is escaping me at the moment...let me go look it up...Elizabeth Taylor). Epic in quotes because I don't know that I've ever seen a movie spanning 30 years and lasting more than 3 hours that still felt like a minimal stage adaptation. Rock Hudson showed his on screen charisma in this early role. Elizabeth Taylor was tolerable but not given enough bite. Really, I don't think I've ever much enjoyed a performance from her unless she's being mean (see also, Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).

Wow. Those are the only movies I've watched so far in October. It's amazing how falling asleep at 9:30 most nights and waking up at 4:30 (for no good reason, my alarm is set for 6) cuts into the movie watching.

===

Hope vacation is fun. Still not feeling it much. Not dreading it or anything but I just don't feel like I'm hitting the road in four days and am having difficulty motivating myself to do those things that need to be done. I did go dig out our passports.

===

59-0? Really. First of all, running up the score is classless, but frankly if you're an NFL team and someone can score 59 points on you, you deserve it anyway.

jamespolk @ 2009-09-23T09:18:00

2009-09-23T16:40:02Z

And now for something unexpected, some comments on the Sookie Stackhouse romance vampire mystery books.

The first one was ok. If Twilight is for 13-year-old girls, Sookie Stackhouse is for 15-year-old girls. It may have been noticed that I am neither. Yet I've now read three different series involving romantic vampires, lust, werewolves, lust, telepathy, and some lust. I keep reading them mostly out of curiosity to see how the exact same idea is approached by different people. At this point in time Patricia Briggs is coming out ahead since she seems satisfied to just churn out mediocre pulp without getting too self important.

Anyway, back to Sookie. I assume that between writing the first and second book author Charlaine Harris suffered a debilitating brain injury since her writing goes from typical pulp genre bad to Dan Brown how'd-she-pass-sixth-grade bad.

I decided to give the third novel a chance in case she regained her faculties following her stroke. Not really, it is a bit better but still written with all the technique of a bored teenager telling you what she did did over summer vacation. But with more lust.

The real problem I have with Harris's writing that I don't have with Briggs or even Stephanie Meyers (even though the fourth Twilight book is actually way worse than the second Sookie book) is this: She apparently can't be bothered to maintain any kind of consistent characterization. Whether Sookie is a bit dim or self-educated extremely bright changes from chapter to chapter. Bill Compton is all kinds of sensitive then not simply as a device for driving the story along. Just little things.

Here's a quote from the first book in the series:

..and I did poorly in school because it was so hard for me to concentrate when so few others were. But when there was testing, I would test very high because the other kids were concentrating om their own papers...

Same character two books later:

But my disability had made it hard enough to get out of high school. A telepathic teenager has an extremely hard time of it, let me tell you. And I had so little control then...trying to concentrate on listening in class, taking tests in a roomful of buzzing brains...the only thing I'd ever excelled at was homework.

So ok, that is two books apart. Only someone who cared about what she was writing would be bothered by that. But she does it within the same book.

Early in book three there are two completely unnecessary instances of showing how uneducated Sookie is:

..And it wasn't Bill's libido. (Libido has just been on my Word-a-Day calendar.)

and

"No, he's not. He's in Seattle," I said. Willfully obtuse. I had learned that word from my Word-a-Day calendar only that morning, and here I was getting to use it.

(I'll ignore that she didn't actually use the word in that second one.) Then later in the book, after showing us that she didn't know such basic words as libido and obtuse until seen on a calendar in her late 20s, she -- of course -- ends up playing Scrabble. What a travesty that will be for her. But no:

"Alcide had graduated from Louisiana Tech. I'd never been to college, but I read a lot so we were about even on the extent of our vocabulary...I scored big with "quirt" and he stuck his tongue out at me.

Or getting serious details on werewolf mythology for the first time Sookie informs the reader that

Weres ran a little hotter than regular people, but mostly they were careful to wear coats in cold weather, since Were society was still secret from the human race...

So, it is a fact about them that she knows but then a quarter of the book later:

Then I remembered how warm his skin was, and I figured he was one of those people who runs kind of hot. Or maybe all Weres were like that?

So she forgot what she already knew and told us.

Anyway, I know this is very picky but books seem to be full of this sloppiness. It isn't just a surprise what will happen next but what the characters will be like next. Only one of those is a good thing.

jamespolk @ 2009-09-10T09:10:00

2009-09-10T16:12:35Z

Inertia is amazing. It has been months since I paid any attention to any of the communities I have on my friends list. The first thing I do when hitting LJ is filter down to Friends Only.

And yet it was too much trouble to just go in and remove the communities. Finally just did that. So much cleaner. Now the only noise will be the 1 post every thing days now that most of you have abandoned LJ for other pastures.

jamespolk @ 2009-09-08T12:21:00

2009-09-08T19:47:04Z

A post in two tones.

First the more significant tone.

On the issue of the Associated Press running a photo of a mortally wounded soldier. Ideally the soldier would not be identifiable from the photograph (and what I've seen, he wasn't) but I don't think it is something that should be shied away from.

And if it is, what is the statute of limitations? I've seen plenty of footage (video and photographic) of wounded and dead soldiers in Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. No matter who the dead person is, for whatever reason the person might be dead, someone with a personal connection will or might be bothered by publication.

==

The less serious tone. On a conference call I'm only half paying attention to. Here's what I've read recently:

1-7) The first seven books of the Shannara novels by Terry Brooks. Haven't read them since I was a kid and wondered if they'd hold up. They actually have a treasured spot in memory for me since they were my first exposure to epic fantasy. Thus when I later read Tolkein it was him who seemed derivative.

Frankly, the books don't hold up well. But I find that is generally true for me with fantasy in general (Tolkein also doesn't hold up in my opinion).

8) The Match King: Ivan Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy. Ivan Kreuger was the Bernie Madoff of the Depression. There is some very interesting financial history in this book (several instruments that are standard today were invented by him in pursuit of what was essentially a pyramid scheme). But the book simply doesn't do enough to establish Kreuger as a social force, simply saying he did.

9) Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs. The latest Mercy Thompson novel; they continue to be pure pulp, though in a form that appeals to me. I do realize that through my purchase of this book I am contributing to the fact that approximately 92% of the movies released in the next year will be vampire or werewolf movies.

10) A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. Never actually read any Sherlock Holmes. I don't know how indicative this first story is of what came later but I'd say this just proves that Victorian readers were an easy lay. It is unfathomable to me that a century later this is still read as any kind of mystery fiction.

11) 2 B R O 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut. A short story. I honestly can't remember without looking it up what it was about.

12) The Allowable Rhyme by H.C. Lovecraft. An essay decrying the new (at the time insistance) for perfect rhyme in poetry. He makes a good case.

13) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Loved it for its quotability (though quoting Oscar Wilde is so passe, time to go back to Alexander Pope). Not at all what I expected from my limited knowledge of the story (most of which comes from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).

14) Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! by Sandra Tsing Loh. I have no idea why I ended up with this book, but I have heard Loh read from it on NPR and was amused. The entire book is essentially about her travails getting her daughter into a "good" school. Apparently she is in the David Sedaris school of NPR people: funny as hell out loud, boring as hell on the page. Though Sedaris has more style, Loh's book seemed to just be ranting like you'd find in a mediocre BBQ Pit thread.

15-16) A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first two John Carter of Mars pulp novels. Again, can't imagine actually reading these for simple pleasure but they are interesting historical documents in the birth of science fiction/fantasy.

17) The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. "Art" in the title has a double meaning. Obviously there is art as craft. But it is also about Art Williams, who shortly after the new design of the $100 bill was released in the late nineties figured out how to make counterfeits good enough to pass all initial inspections. The story of the counterfeiting is interesting, unfortunately Art Williams is essentially the same as that of any other habitual criminal. There's sympathy for what he went through but the book lacks any dramatic tension. This is mostly because Williams is the only source for the story. The Secret Service did not make itself available so there is no information on how he was tracked down or how they were reacting to his counterfeits entering circulation.

18) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I'd never read the book and am surprised at how different it is from the movie (I knew there were significant differences but it's pretty total). I understand why the movie had to be changed and I'd say I still prefer the movie to the book. But with modern technology I think it is now possible for Dorothy to be told off by the porcelain milkmaid.

jamespolk @ 2009-09-08T09:03:00

2009-09-08T16:08:56Z

I find the failed Darwin Award attempts to be more interesting than the successful ones. Anybody can die in an act of stupidity but I love acts of stupidity where the person, against all odds survives.

I'm currently reading a book about the Secret Service (the author was on The Daily Show a few weeks ago; hopefully the writing or story telling improves because it is pretty awful so far). This was just recounted:

In August 1995, CAT [Counterassault team] deployed again when President Clinton was playing golf at the Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club in Wyoming. Secret Service agents spotted a worker aiming a rifle at Clinton from the rooftop of a home under construction on the edge of the golf course. It turned out that the man was using the rifle's telescopic site to watch the presidential party up close. Agents held him for questioning and then released him.

I can only assume this guy was thinking "this is certain to get me a Darwin Award!" Could he possibly have thought it a good idea to observe the president's golf outing using a rifle? I'm also amazed that in this situation the Secret Service didn't just shoot him and sort it out later.

jamespolk @ 2009-09-03T13:46:00

2009-09-03T20:49:47Z

I read this story in the local paper this morning.

I can understand the family preferring that the murderer of their daughter not be in the same cemetery as her. But since it isn't like he's in the next plot (510 feet is reasonably far in cemetery terms) I must say must gut reaction is that being outraged, doing press, and demanding he be moved strikes me as too much.

But I'm a heartless bastard about dead bodies (in that I the way most people fetishize them is completely foreign to me). What say others?

jamespolk @ 2009-08-28T09:47:00

2009-08-28T16:51:49Z

Three things that annoy me about the elevators at work:

1. To save power the lights are on motion sensors so they turn off when nobody is inside. That's a great idea, even if the motion sensors don't always work well (the same idea is much more annoying in the restrooms). However, each elevator also has a six inch LCD monitor showing news snippets and human interest factoids. Those monitors never turn off. I've come in at 2am on a Sunday morning and all six of them were on. Seems to me the power benefit of turning off the lights has been very much negated.

2. One of the "ads" shown in rotation says "In case of fire or earthquake, please use the stairs." The fire and earthquake part is one screen then it flashes to the second half. For some reason I see the second half much more frequently than the first half and think I'm being nagged to exercise more.

3. Another of the things in rotation on the monitor are the top four current twitter topics. That is incredibly useless information. 99% of the time it is completely meaningless and the 1% of the time you know what it one of them is talking about, exactly what are you supposed to do about it in an elevator?

jamespolk @ 2009-08-27T17:45:00

2009-08-28T00:46:23Z

So I was intrigued by a flavor of Haagen Dazs that I hadn't seen before: brown sugar.

Not particularly good. But what is odd is that it tastes exactly as advertised. So I'm not sure why I thought it would be good.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-22T16:36:00

2009-08-22T23:53:18Z

Maybe this is just me, but have you ever found yourself in a situation where you don't like someone. Let's call him Gregoire (wrote this the first time using "Bob" but didn't want a specific person thinking I was looking down on her new Gregoire). Anyway, you don't like Gregoire and you go along not liking Gregoire.

Then one day something causes you to realize that you don't really have any good reason for not like Gregoire. He's never done anything bad to you. A lot of people you like, like him. But when the opportunity comes up to do something, if Gregoire is involved you find a way to avoid it. So now that you realize you don't really have a good reason for not liking Gregoire you think maybe you should make an effort to socialize with him and do away with whatever subconscious barrier you've had.

But then you realize you're perfectly ok with not liking Gregoire. That you don't actually want to get over the barrier, as unfair as it may be to him.

Today, I realized that is me and Los Angeles. I don't like Los Angeles, I know I don't really have any good reason not to like Los Angeles and many of the reasons I might gin up for not likely Los Angeles apply perfectly well to places I do like (San Diego, for example). A lot of my friends live in Los Angeles (and many of them claim to like it there). I like visiting my friends so down we come on occasion. But without that reason I don't really have any desire to socialize with the place. I'm comfortable with my distaste for Los Angeles.

This is brought on by the fact that Lani is down here in Anaheim (when I say "Los Angeles" I am using it cover pretty much everthing from Castaic in the north to down just short of the Balboa Park in San Diego in the south and then east to Barstow) for Blizzcon and she asked me to come along so'd she'd have a chauffer and errand boy. The thinking was (by me) that with two days of being alone I'd go do some site seeing since the only time we're ever down here is to go to Disneyland (though that reason doesn't exist any more) or to do something specific with friends. One trip we went to the Los Angeles Zoo (an abysmal zoo, in my opinion) and once to Universal Studios and that is the entirety of our non-friend tourism outside of Disneyland. Plenty of shit to see and do beyond that. I'd finally go do some of it.

Maybe visit a beac or some museums or go do touristy things in Hollywood or whatever. Instead, it turns out that faced with the choice between being bored in my hotel room and actually trying to get to know Los Angeles, I'd rather be bored in my hotel room. I actually watched a Bigfoot "documentary" on Discovery Channel this morning. I've gone to the movies twice (Inglourious Basterds mostly good, (500) Days of Summer angsty bullshit).

Now, don't get me wrong, if I were touristing around LA with friends I'd have a great time. Because I was with friends. But me and LA one on one? Well, in that case apparently Gregoire can go to hell.

But this does shed light on things. Lani and I have done many random road trips over the last decade of living in California. Not once have we just said "hey, let's go in the direction of Los Angeles and see what happens." But we've certainly gone farther (at least in time if not miles) on many other trips. Now I know, part of me doesn't want to like Los Angeles. I'm such a slut when it comes to enjoying every place I ever find myself (I mean it seriously when I say "sure, I'd love to live in <insert mundane location> for a year" and then other people recoil) that it feels good to know there is one place I don't want to be.

This also means that if Lani wants to go to Blizzcon again next year, she's probably coming alone because HoJo's Anaheim is not a good hotel to be bored in (for god sakes how stupid is it to situatethe TV so that it is lower than the bed (the only place to sit and watch it?)

jamespolk @ 2009-08-19T22:27:00

2009-08-20T05:30:42Z

I know this is old and cliched:

"Americans think 100 years is a long time; Europeans think 100 miles is a long way."

But I really do think that thought most of the time I hear Europeans talk about how far away something is and American talk about how old something local is.

This thought brought to you when reading a comment from a Londoner semi-incredulous over a 400-mile drive for some relatively insignificant reason. And not only that but done in a single day.

Whereas I don't really consider it to have be a day of driving unless I put in at least 7-800 miles. I've done 400 before stopping for breakfast (I've also, with the hybrid car done 400 without stopping to pee).

On the other hand I love the house I grew up in because it was old and quirky. It was built in 1912.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-12T18:11:00

2009-08-13T01:13:08Z

Spent much of the day setting people straight on what the main health care bill people are talking about actually says as opposed to what a whisper in the night told them they think they heard was probably in there and if not then it would surely be the next step to killing every loved one you have.

I don't support a lot of what is in there. I'd just rather people protest against what it actually says.

I'm sure now that I've done this all of the silliness will end and serious honest debate will break out around the country.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-11T09:44:00

2009-08-11T16:45:06Z

Before you open your mouth and say:

Bigotry against <> is the last acceptable bigotry

Stop a moment then decide not to speak so as not to sound stupid.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-11T08:56:00

2009-08-11T16:14:48Z

Listening to a news story on graveyard space in military graveyards.

I know I'm the odd one out but I just can't wrap my head around caring about what happens to my body after I'm dead. Even if I believed in a Christianity-style afterlife I can't see caring about my body.

One guy interviewed said he wanted to be buried in a military graveyard because then he'd know someone was taking care of his plot. There'd be flowers, and a flag at appropriate times.

This just strikes me as horribly self-centered.

Anyway, I've told Lani many times that when I'm dead she can throw my body out in the street to be eaten by dogs for all I care, but that once I'm dead anything done with me is for the benefit of those people still alive so anything that helps with that is fine with me. So if you have requests, direct them to her and not me.

=======

And now to piss off handicapped people. I may be missing something, but what is the argument for exempting handicapped people from paying for city parking? I can understand allowing them more time (though not necessarily unlimited) and so in a traditional parking meter strategy I recognize that you can't necessarily separate them.

But in parking garages or areas with computerized common meters it should be possible to charge them for the time used or -- for metered parking -- at least one cycle.

Giving them a pass on paying seems to contain the condescending assumption that handicapped people are indigent. But there are many reasons there are people that find it difficult to afford parking fees and they don't get a pass. On my walk to work this morning I pass 15 parking meters. This morning 11 of them were occupied by cars with handicapped placards (including one Mercedes that goes weeks without moving then disappears for a day or two before appearing in the exact same spot) and I'd say the average new value for those cars is probably above $30,000.

I'm all in favor of easing mobility issues for the handicapped. But I don't understand why not paying when parking in the 5th Street garage to watch a movie at the Metreon helps with mobility issues. Or being able to park on California Street for days at a time.

========

And, just to confirm that I'm a crotchedy old man, at home we've been having a problem with some youngsters in the complex revving their car engines too loud. They're probably on my lawn when I'm not looking too.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-09T07:58:00

2009-08-09T15:19:18Z

Spent the day yesterday on a very pleasant back roads drive, which is something that we haven't done in quite a while. The problem being that after a decade we have to go pretty far afield to find a back road we haven't been on before.

So yesterday we drove up to Santa Rosa and took River Road through Guerneville to the coast, drove up the coast to Stewart's Point and then took a barely labeled road back inland to Healdsberg and then back home.

Stopped in Oakland to pick up fried chicken sandwiches from Bake Sale Betty's (seriously, if you're in the area you want one of these) with the idea of finding a nice spot to eat them when we hit the coast.

Unfortunately traffic was awful from San Rafael all the way to Santa Rosa so Lani ended up eating hers in the car. Stopped in Guerneville and walked the retail strip. Johnson Beach there is where Vince and Shannon always camp, I think.

When we finally hit Jenner on the coast, stopped again and I ate my sandwich sitting on the water under the watchful eye of a single very patient seagull.

Up to Stewart's Point to the turn back inland. As we headed up the one-lane road into the hills I made a joke about if this turned into California Deliverance Lani got to be Burt Reynolds because I planned to survive. Of course, it would have been more accurate if I had remembered correctly that Ronnie Cox is the one who dies, not Burt Reynolds. Still, hopefully that would leave me being Jon Voight and not Ned Beatty.

Anyway, joke made funnier when about four miles in we pass through a small community of about 10 houses and one elementary school (one of the few remaining one-room public schools in California). One of the houses has several blankets hanging on a clothesline outside and one of those blankets was a big Confederate flag. That's something you don't see often in California.

So, boring day for a lot of people but Lani and I enjoy doing it so it was nice. Too bad that at this point it is so hard to find new territory.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-07T09:24:00

2009-08-07T16:25:31Z

Can somebody make the case for me as to why anybody would want to participate in this.

I can't think of any reason I'd want the owner of any random LJ I might happen to visit to know that I did so.

jamespolk @ 2009-08-06T10:45:00

2009-08-06T17:45:53Z

Both Twitter and LJ were down at the same time this morning (and so far as I can tell Twitter is still down five hours later).

It was kind of like living through Omega Man. The isolation, it was haunting.

jamespolk @ 2009-07-31T09:34:00

2009-07-31T16:42:19Z

A couple years ago I figured out how to use suburban public transportation to get my self out ot the local DMV to renew my drivers license (after suddenly remembering it expired that day). Then waited for about 90 minutes for my slot (since I didn't have an appointment).

Only to be told as soon as I said why I was there: "are you sure, your license doesn't expire until next year."

In my defense, everywhere I've lived other than California has had a 4 year expiration and California gives five. But still, when I looked at it and saw "Expires: 09/11/2007" my brain just didn't grasp that it was still 2006.

Today, I am booking the final piece of our Costa Rica trip and decide to use a secondary credit card and notice that the expiration date is 8/31/09. "Oh no!" says I, "That expires today and they haven't sent the replacement!"

Of course I don't notice the error myself but had to have it pointed out to me by the nice (really, she explicitly said I'm not an idiot) lady on the phone.

jamespolk @ 2009-07-24T14:33:00

2009-07-24T21:34:26Z

Hey Paola!

Didn't you have the guy who invented WD-40 speak at one of your classes a year or two ago?

jamespolk @ 2009-07-24T08:47:00

2009-07-24T15:54:17Z

I'm tolerant of language foibles so long as clarity is not compromised. I way off in the descriptivist camp lobbing rotten eggs at the prescriptivists.

But we all have our irrational pet peeves. Nukular bothers me not at all. But I want to drive a stake through the heart of people who pronounce illegal like it is a new dotcom (e-legal).

Second, I tell Lani to talk to the hand whenever she gets annoyed at me for saying I did something "on accident" instead of "by accident." And yet I'd consider joining the Taliban if they promised to stone people who say they "itched " when they mean they scratched. "Because of a mosquito bite I itched my leg until it bled," such a person might say and I go off in search of rocks.

Yes, completely irrational

jamespolk @ 2009-07-20T08:20:00

2009-07-20T16:28:16Z

Nothing too exciting over the weekend, so the movies I watched:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - I haven't really enjoyed the last several Harry Potter movies (I've also never read the books) and have only been going because Lani wants to (and it seems that is more because she's curious enough about what happens than actual enjoyment). This one didn't really do much to improve my view of the story, the big problem is that utlimately I don't understand why Harry Potter is in any way "a hero." He's just passive within his own story 99% of the time. And it is always odd to me how fantasy embraces the idea of genetics over environment and the Harry Potter story does this to an annoying extent.

But as a standalone movie this one was much better constructed than the previous few. I don't know if that is because of judicious elision by the filmmakers or because of the book on which it was based. Yes, the movie was primarily focused on the completely uninteresting hormonal pinings of teenagers (played out with all of the subtlety of a 1960s Doris Day romcom) but at least it was focused. There was the snogging and there was the relatively simple track of Potter trying to get a memory.

In reading reviews I suspect there was a lot of depth to the movie that was completley lost from unfamiliarity with the book but unlike some of the other movies I didn't feel like that was slapping me in the face saying "you can't understand this scene unless you go read the book!" This time I felt everything made sense on the level presented in the movie so I am ok with it being augmented by having read the books.

So, still pretty boring but an improvement. Still wouldn't be bothered if the last movie ends with Harry Potter dying slowly while another, successfully killing Voldemort, shouts out "Sorry Potter, but to the character that actually does something go the spoils!"

Pretty Persuasion - (Via Netflix streaming) This 2005 movie is a mash-up of Clueless and The Bad Seed. Evan Rachel Wood plays an extremely bright sociopathic 15-year-old who is willing to do anything for revenge and in pursuit of fame. Some good dialog. I'll forget in a few weeks that I ever saw it.

The Hurt Locker - This one is getting great reviews and I agree it is incredibly well made, has an old style approach to suspense (with modern editing) that really amps things up. But it didn't really connect for me. I don't think the intent of the movie is to present a character you like so much as to explain a character type. Or at least I didn't like Sergeant James (played very well by Jeremy Renner) but did come away feeling I understood why he was the way he was even if I wouldn't want to know him myself.

Hopscotch - (Via Netflix streaming) I've been on something of a Walter Matthau binge lately and he's just one of those actors that I love to see regardless of how horrible the movie itself is (c.f. Movers & Shakers). Fortunately, though, Hopscotch is a pleasant surprise. This spy comedy has Matthau as a top field man for the CIA who, when put out to pasture in a power play, begins writing a memoir of the CIA's biggest fiascos and copying all the intelligence agencies around the world before giving it to a publisher. He does this a chapter at a time while leading the CIA and KGB on a search around the world. Nothing earth shattering in this one except a surprisingly consistent comedic tone (never too far into slapstick, and a somewhat real-world grounding) and good dialog.

jamespolk @ 2009-07-13T14:39:00

2009-07-13T21:42:11Z

Does anybody else have what I call "Stretching Tourettes"?

When I stretch I find that it feels much better if I curse vulgarly while doing so, and involves little aforethought. It just comes out. So after watching a movie on the couch I might stand and stretch shouting out "fuck a duck with a cum swizzler" (often things don't make much sense).

If I stretch without it it just isn't as satisfying.

It also carries with it the joy of uttering a sentence that may never before have been uttered in human history (yes, that bit of Garden State was stolen from me).