Random Access

I knew that I liked Spring for a reason….

When I checked the Weather Channel’s website to see what the current and forecasted temperature is/would be, this is the revelation that greeted me:

West Jordan, UT (84088) as reported at Salt Lake City, UT. Last Updated Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 9:56 AM Mountain Standard Time (Thursday, 11:56 AM EST)

Cloudy
52°F Feels Like: 51°F

UV Index: 2 Minimal
Wind: From the East Southeast at 5 mph
Dew Point: 25°F
Humidity: 35 %
Visibility: Unlimited
Barometer: 30.29 inches and steady

Today
Mar 21 Partly Cloudy Hi: 62°F Lo: 38°F

UV Index: 5 Moderate

And have I mentioned that it’s only the first full day of Spring?! It is. Yes, in the words of the old Kellogg’s cereal commercials: “It’s going to be a great day!”

Peace.

Wednesday.

Since I missed saying anything about it beforehand, I hope that your Vernal Equinox was enjoyable. That’s right, girls and boys: It is now officially Spring! And we all know what that means, right? Of course you do! Captain Sisko’s favorite pastime: BASEBALL! Spring Training is just around the corner.

::: bliss :::
On Talk of the Nation today, they discussed whether or not the Enron scandal was the inevitable result of deregulation. The interesting twist: They did it in the form of a debate. Callers could pose a question to either, or both, guest(s). The guest then had one minute to answer followed by a thirty second rebuttal by the other guest. This was a rather enjoyable format.

With the Oscars being handed out on this coming Sunday, TotN also presented a “preview” of the Awards Ceremony. During this segment, they also posed a question about movies and our perception/expectations of them: “Do we expect Hollywood to give us factual history?” In other words, given the number of releases that could be considered “historical fiction” and/or “based on a true story,” how much creative license is enough or too much? They cited Titanic, Gladiator, and A Beautiful Mind in this portion of the program.

On All Things Considered, they noted a poll whose results found that while “…many Americans believe the influence of religion is a positive force, many others see it as the root of blame it for playing a critical role in creating conflict worldwide…”

After work, we went out with some friends for dinner. On the way there, I called (and actually spoke with) Mom. Her chorus sang in the state competition today; they received a “Superior” rating. Way to go, Mom! I also had time to put in a call to my uncle and handle a tech support question for the inlaws.

That about covers the highlights of the day and it’s time for this §hado to fade…

Peace.

Tuesday
Not a bad day at all. The whole gang was there, including “El Maestro de Slackfantastic” himself: . Who knew!?

Programming note for Wednesday’s Talk of the Nation: “Wednesday, March 20, 2002 – Is the Enron debacle the logical result of deregulation? Robert Kuttner of the liberal magazine The American Prospect and Grover Norquist of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform say it is. They’ll answer that question in greater detail, and respond to your questions, Wednesday on Talk of the Nation.”¹

And now, back to Tuesday’s item of interest:
Talk of the Nation – The first topic was Biblical Archeology. The lead-in questions were: “Passover and Easter, two of the most important holidays to Jews and Christians, are right around the corner. On the next Talk of the Nation, we’ll take a look at the latest advances in biblical archeology. Is the fact that Moses existed or not important to you? Does it help your faith to believe that your religion is based on scientific fact? How faith and fact intersect.”² Today’s guests were:

• Bruce Feiler, Author, Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses (Harper Perennial, 2002)
• Rabbi Harold Kushner, Co-editor, Etz Hayim: the New Torah, Author
• Jonathan Reed, Archeologist, Professor of Religion and Biblical Archeology, University of La Verne, La Verne, California

Faith is defined in the following ways:

• “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” Hebrews 11:1 – 3, Holy Bible (NKJV), Thomas Nelson Publishers.
• faith n.
  1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
  2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. Synonyms: belief, trust.
  3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one’s supporters.
  4. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will.
  5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
  6. A set of principles or beliefs.

  From http://www.dictionary.com

I have lived with the belief that the Bible is the Word of God handed down to man. I can accept this. To use the vernacular, “I take this on faith.” But, I also know that it has undergone a number of translations and “revisions” in the past two-thousand years. Did you think that King James got his own version by accident? No. In fact, you can read a history of the King James Bible here and “issues” with the KJV here.

I remember a conversation that I had with a friend of the family – he is also a Baptist minister – many years ago about the veracity of the parting of the Red Sea. I believe that he said that it was actually a “sea of reeds” through which the Israelites travelled. To me, I don’t need to have the Cecil B. Demille version of the parting of the Red Sea in order to appreciate the fact that divine intervention delivered the throng from the Egyptians. The medium (water or reeds) doesn’t matter; the fact that they passed out of bondage and into freedom does. Rabbi Kushner said:

“…what I find fascinating is that the editors of the Torah tried to minimize the degree of divine intervention and suspension of natural law, so that if you read the story of the splitting of the Red Sea, there is this seemingly gratuitous reference to a strong east wind, blowing the waters apart. Now, why mention the East Wind? Why not just say that ‘God divided the sea?’ Because, I think, the editors didn’t want to demand of the reader that they accept the suspension of natural law. They wanted to find God working within natural law The miracle was not that water suddenly went in two different directions, the miracle is that people who were slaves found their way across that sea with the confidence to cross because they thought that God was on their side and guiding them.”³

Taken another way: If you have ever told someone something and then they tell someone…. (“…and they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on…”)⁴ and the “same” story gets back to you, you will most likely notice that the story has transformed somewhat as it has been passed along. Imagine 2000+ years of passing down. Now add imperfect translations to the equation. Now you get the idea. This does not mean that I don’t believe that miracles happened, but I can take some of the stories with a grain of salt (don’t tell Lot⁵ that I said that).

And, before I go, a quick poll. You can thank (or blame) for putting the idea for this into my head.

And that will do it for now. Thanks for tuning in.

Peace.

¹ From the Talk of the Nation.
² From the Talk of the Nation.
³ From the Talk of the Nation, RealAudio content.
⁴ From a 1970s Fabergé Organics Shampoo commercial.
⁵ Genesis 19: 23 – 26

Monday
Fortunately, we only have to deal with Mondays once a week. Today was a LONG day, but I think that the fact that from 12:00 until 16:00 took about seven hours to get through might have had something to do with it.

Longest four hours EVER! ::: gesture :::From the bottoms of the hour until :05 till each hour, I seemed most inclined to attempt inner eyelid studies.

Today’s NPR items come from Talk of the Nation.

• During the news between the first and second hours, there was a news item about a battle in the U. K. (specifically in England, I think) whether fox hunting with dogs should be outlawed. While fox hunting is a “sport” here in the States, there is one major difference: In the U.S., when the hounds find the fox, they merely chase and trap it, the fox is later freed; in the U. K., the dogs kill the fox. Someone was quoted as saying “Fox hunting [in the U. K.] is cruel to foxes.” This comment, to me, comes squarely under the “No Shit” category.
• The second hour’s topic was White Collar Crime. The following statistic was given
  

  “One academic study shows that criminals who stole more that $100,000 (USD) in the savings and loan scandal (in the 1990s) served, on average, a little more than three (3) years in prison. In that same period, burglars who stole about $300, on average, spent, on average, about a year longer behind bars. First time drug offenders served more than five years.”¹

  The overall questions for this segment were whether or not penalties for those convicted of white collar crimes should be different from those of the common criminal and/or is there a double standard? Guests for this segment were:

  • Clifton Leaf, Asst. Managing Editor, Fortune Magazine
  • Henry Pontell, Chair of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California at Irvine
  • Benito Romano, Defense Attorney at Wilke, Farr & Gallagher in New York and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

  They had a caller from Hillsborough, N.C. who asked what percentage of the crimes were commited by minorities and how disparate the sentencing was. Mr. Leaf said that studies showed that 95% of white collar crimes are committed by whites, but blacks who commit frauds often receive more harsh sentences than whites. She then added that she thought that these crimes should be called “white white collar crime,” since the majority of offenders are white. *boggle* Neil Conan, the show’s host, joked that in the next article, she would be given a 15% cut for coining the term; her response “How much?!”

Other than that, the day was rather uneventful. After work, I came home and that’s pretty much the day, in a nutshell.

Peace.

¹ From the Talk of the Nation website, RealAudio

Sunday
It was a relatively uneventful day…

• Slept in.
• Comic shop.
• CompUSAir.
• Borders.
• Quick trip to the grocery store.
• Home – cooked dinner and vegged.

I also remembered something that I meant to say about Resident Evil: It reminded me of Aliens meets Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, with a twist of The Matrix thrown in for good measure.

And with that…. goodnight.

Peace.

Since this is technically Sunday morning, let me start of by saying:

Top o’ the mornin’ to ye!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

And now that we have cleared that bit of business out of the way, on with the posting!
Friday:

• Worked a half-day.
• Went to lunch with Jess, Julia, Gary and Colleen, and Angie. We went to the Macaroni Grill. Tasty foods. I took my pencil and eraser in and drew on the tablecloth while waiting for our food to arrive. The tablecloths are made of paper and are meant to be drawn on; they bring crayons when they seat you. Julia and I played “What Can You Make From This Squiggle” on the tablecloth during dessert.
• Went to Borders and picked up a copy of Beethoven’s Wig: Sing Along Symphonies.
• Came home and, aside from some minor straightening-up, pretty much vegged the night away.

Saturday:

• Slept in.
• Around 14:00, it started to snow… which would continue, intermittently, throughout the day.
• Met Paul and some friends of his and saw Resident Evil. Yeah, yeah… it’s a movie based on a video game. I know that those never seem to turn out ‘just right.’ I have to admit that I enjoyed this; it was a decent portrayal of a video game on the big screen. Sure it had its faults, but I wasn’t going hoping to see a Gladiator-level movie. On the whole, I enjoyed it and would consider seeing it again, if someone else wanted to see it.
• Came home, picked up Jess and…
• Met Angie and Julia for Showtime. I liked this quite a bit; it was a spot-on spoof of the mismatched buddy cop movie genre. One low spot in watching this movie: With :15 or so left in the movie, our snack tray shifted radically and I wound up wearing Cherry Coke. So did the guy in front of me, although he didn’t get nearly as much on him. Yay me. *shrug* Things like this happen. I hovered (kind of sit/squatting) above my seat for the last few minutes of the movie. When I got into the lobby, I (and everyone there) could finally see what the damage looked like. Julia said that it didn’t look like I had wet myself, so to speak, but I still got a few odd looks from passers-by on the way to the car. Ehhh. Let ’em wonder.
• Came home to shower and change.
• Jess and I went out to eat… and then…
• Went bowling. Julia and Larry met us there. Delfina and a friend of hers dropped by to say “hi” and hang out for a bit. I’m not sure what the final win-loss tally was.
• Went to the nearby Village Inn for post-pin killing eats. We got Jaysin, a waiter, to dance (like he did two weeks ago), giving Jess and Julia an idea of what Larry and I had seen before.
• Home.

That’s it in a nutshell. And with that, “…now I lay me down in Dreamland…”¹

Peace.

¹ From Second Nature on the CD “Hold Your Fire” by Rush.

I am up WAY later than I had planned because, like Prince, it seems that “…I was busy doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before.” Oh well. Doesn’t matter too much since it’s the weekend.

Anywho, I’ll post more tomorning.

Peace.

I forgot to list a “Me Moment” from Wednesday.

I bench pressed 245 lbs.
One rep.
But I did it… without killing myself!

That’s all.
Thanks for indulging me.

Thursday.
One day left in the work week.

Fairly quiet day at work.

On the radio today:

• Talk of the Nation:
  • The Future of the Catholic Church was the first topic on the agenda. The overall discussion focused on the current scandals of sexual abuse by priests. The guests were (first half-hour) Tom Groome, a professor at Boston College and a former priest and (second half-hour) George Weigel, Catholic Theologian and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Groome seemed a bit more liberal in his views, but is still firmly rooted in the Catholic Church’s tenets; I started the second half-hour disliking Mr Weigel, but his clarity and directness did prove persuasive and convincing.

    The main thing that irritated me about this segment was a caller who prefaced a statement by saying “… before I say anything else, I need to tell you that do I have friends who are homosexual and lesbians and I care for them deeply, but when it comes to the Catholic religion I don’t believe that they have any place in the priesthood or being nuns….“¹ It brought to mind last night’s back-to-back episodes of “Family Ties;” Jess was watching it in the living room and I started watching them with her. They were the episodes where Steven Keaton’s co-worker, Gus, and his family moved into the neighborhood… and the commotion that this caused with the neighbors. Why was there a problem? Because they were African-American and the neighbors didn’t want their property values to decrease because they had moved in. *boggle* It also reminded me of people who automatically resort to racial identification to explain whom Person A is to Person B. While I realize that identifying someone by race makes it “easier” to form a visual picture, but I’m one of those people who think that it shouldn’t matter. Sexual orientation? Same brand, different flavor.

    It was pleasing to hear both of the in-studio guests speak positively and in a non-condemning manner about gay and lesbian members of the clergy and in convents. Mr. Weigel even made note that the issue of pedophilia is exclusive to homosexual members of the clergy; he admitted that “…it is entirely possible for a person of homosexual orientation – a man of homosexual orientation – to lead a fully chaste life in the ministry.”²

• All Things Considered:
  • Charles Pickering In this segment, Susan Stamsberg and Nina Totenberg discussed the vote for admitting Judge Pickering to the federal appeals bench. It was noted that this is the first Bush nominee whose admission has been blocked and that more nominees have been admitted to the bench in the first nine months of President Bush’s administration than were admitted in the first three years of the Clinton administration.
  • Pearl Investigation – Grand Jury Indictment Attorney General Ashcroft said that he wanted to signal his intent to bring Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the man charged with the kidnapping/murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, to justice. It was noted that if he is extradicted to the U.S., the trial would be held in New Jersey, the temporary home/headquarters of the WSJ. And they really think that he will get an impartial jury of his peers here….? This almost immediately reminded me of the reasons that the O.J. Simpson trial was moved. But, maybe that’s just me.
  • Rosie Commentator Michael Alvear asserted that Rosie O’Donnell, who “outted” herself in an interview with Diane Sawyer, chose to make her orientation known at this time to help increase sales of her new book. Ms. O’Donnell’s stated reasons for doing it are to help bring to light the status of gay adoptions in Florida; she is attempting to adopt a child there to whom she is a foster mother. To me, and to my friends who heard the commentary, he just sounded a little bitter.
  • Beethoven’s Wig If you have ever attempted to unsuccessfully introduce classical music to a child (or if your inner child likes to come out and play), this is the CD for you. Richard Perlmutter has “composed silly lyrics… that both tell a story about the artist and can help [the] classically impaired remember the names and composers of these old faves.”³ Julia and I nearly doubled over in fits of laughter at some of the sound clips that they played from the CD. This comes under the “Must Purchase” heading and will go very well with my Schoolhouse Rock!, Animaniacs, and Disney animated movie soundtrack CDs. Beethoven’s Wig: Sing Along Symphonies is available from Rounder Kids Records.

And that’s all the ranting from Lake Saline where the snow is falling, the work week is almost over and the children all sing silly songs to classical music. Goodnight, everybody. Thanks for tuning in.

Peace.

¹ From the Talk of the Nation website, RealAudio content.
² From the Talk of the Nation website, RealAudio content.
³ From the All Things Considered website, RealAudio content

Wednesday.

Things that went through my mind, besides the wind, while listening to NPR and PRI today:

• Talk of the Nation:
  • They spent the first hour talking about the re-election of President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The elections have been the object of international scrutiny due to “violence, mass arrests, and accusations of ‘voting irregularities.'”¹ Even though I know very little that I know about Mr. Mugabe’s tenure as President, the few things that I have gleaned in the past week paint him in a rather unfavorable light. On today’s show, they had Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to the United States, Simbi Mubako, as a guest, along with Lovemore Mahduku, Chair of the National Constitutional Assembly and Duke Lefhoko, Member of Parliament in Botswana and the Head of the Southern African Development Countries (SADC) Parliamentary Forum Delegation to Zimbabwe. Mr. Mubako said something that struck me as interesting: He noted that while we had a rather tumultuous presidential election in 2000, but that other countries did not feel that it was their right or duty to intervene. This is true, and I can agree with that statement up to that point. However, we did not have a case where people were detained and/or arrested while attempting to vote. I can understand other nations’ concerns about the well-being and safety of their voting neighbors, if they feel that their rights to be treated as human beings are being impinged.
  • The next segment dealt, ironically, with journaling. When I heard them talking about this on Tuesday, I will admit that I was not expecting it to be interesting at all. I was pleasantly surprised. The guests for this segment were Elizabeth Stone (Professor of English, Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University), Alexandra Johnson (author), and Marcus Rosenbaum (author and NPR staff member) . Ms. Stone has authored a book which is comprised of the journals of a former student of hers; he left them to her in his will. His reason: He felt that teachers, too often, are not aware of the affect that they have on their students’ lives and he wanted to make sure that she knew just how important she had been to him. They also talked about the differences in men’s and women’s journal-writing styles – men often write in an electronic medium (sic), while women often use a paper medium. Mrs. Johnson also noted that she found the diaries of a 19th Century woman who had lived in the home that she . She said that she enjoyed reading the diaries that followed a woman who was “somebody beginning to try to connect the dots in life… to see and understand the plot of a life… to play detective to her own days.”²

    I remember when I was in 10th Grade, one of my English classes required that we keep a journal. There are probably few things more onerous to a 14-year-old boy than to be told that you have to write something every day. I didn’t. My journal was extremely sparse. Fast forward fifteen years… I started keeping this journal almost a year ago and have made entries almost religiously. My reasons for keeping a journal include, but are not limited to:

    • It is a repository for my thoughts, random as they may be;
    • It is a place to keep ideas for future writings;
    • It is where I can rant, rave, kick and scream about things… without harm to myself or anyone else.

    I don’t know whether or not the fact that I keep an online journal speaks to me giving voice to my inner exhibitionist, but I do know that what I write is for me. If someone takes offense at something that I have to say, they should realize that this is not an objective journal; all entries are quite subjective, in fact. I will apologize for anyone’s getting hurt because of something that I have written, I will not apologize for that I have to say. If someone finds what I have to say interesting enough to read, or even comment on, so much the better… in fact, I welcome any comments and/or criticisms that readers care to offer.

  • There was some talk about the aftermath of the Andrea Yates trial. It seems as though her sentencing will be contingent upon further determination of her mental state.
• On PRI’s The World, one of the segments covered Canada’s PrideVision television, “the world’s first Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) television network to broadcast 24/7.”³ MTV and Showtime have announced that they intend to create a similar channel here in the U.S. There seems to be a lot of concern about the content, where and when it will be available. In an interview with John Levy, PrideVision Chairman and CEO, he addressed that issue by explaining that
  

  “…this is a lifestyle network which has tremendous programming from all facets of the GLBT community and one particular facet of it is erotica. And, we also tried to do it in a way that, of course, is in a timeslot which is appropriate which is after midnight… There’s no inadvertent viewing of this. People who are coming to the network know exactly what the programming is, hopefully will come to love it. Even within the viewership, there’s going to be certain segments of the programming they like and certain things they don’t like. But in the context of people falling onto this programming, whether it’s erotica or other types of programming, it won’t happen unless they specifically come to us.”⁴

  For some reason, this reminds me of the advent of Black Entertainment Television (BET). People asked why such a channel was necessary. It was necessary to address the needs of a part of the community that desired voices and faces that reflected their own. The same situation exists here. I hope that MTV and Showtime actually have the fortitude to carry through with their plans.

With that, I think that I will stop.

Peace.

¹, ² From NPR’s Talk of the Nation website.
³ From the PrideVision TV website.
⁴ From an interview on PRI’s The World.

Tuesday, in a nutshell:

• Woke up.
• Observed the proper Rituals of Hygiene. ::: genuflect :::
• Headed to Sandi and Jim’s to see if the CDs that I had been looking for were there. They were! Hallelujah!
• Stopped to pick up a cup of frozen mocha goodness on the way home. Added a double shot of espresso today because it would have been bad form to fall asleep while processing mail.
• Work.
• Went to Adrian’s. We hung out, went for a bit of a joyride in a car that he’s selling, and stopped for a late/early breakfast at the local V.I.
• Home.

Otherwise, it was a rather quiet day. The only things that stick out about today’s news on NPR were:

• Talk of the Nation‘s economic segment. It seems that economists aren’t sure whether or not we actually had a recession over the past six months or if it was just a downward trend, since there wasn’t an across-the-board downward spiral. It seems as if the jury is still out on this one…
• TotN‘s segment about K-Mart’s current financial woes; they are closing nearly 300 stores and will be firing 22,000 employees. Some of the people who were interviewed or called in reminded me of people that I know who are, or were, loyal shoppers of the store.
• Andrea Yates found guilty. I don’t really think that I need to say much more about this one.

In rereading the subject that I have chosen – and in light of the items I touched on in this post – I think that it is fitting to identify its origin. It comes from the song “Turn the Page,” by Rush, from their 1987 CD Hold Your Fire. The complete lyrics follow:

Nothing can survive in a vacuum
No one can exists all alone
We pretend things only happen to strangers
We’ve all got problems of our own

It’s enough to learn to share our pleasures
We can’t sooth pain with sympathy
All that we can do is be reminded
We shake our heads at the tragedy

Every day we’re standing in a time capsule
Racing down a river from the past
Every day we’re standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast

It’s just the age
It’s just a stage
We disengage
We turn the page…

Looking at the long-range forecast
Catching all the names in the news
Checking out the state of the nation
Learning the environmental blues

Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split, and pieces that don’t fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit

And with that, goodnight.

Peace.

Monday.

• Work.
• Gym.
• Home.
• Cooked and ate.
• Undertook the “Bring Order to the Randomness of the Office” Project. GAH!

I actually think that I wanted to have another tirade about something that I heard on NPR/PRI today, but I didn’t get a chance to research it, so I will table it… for now.

And now: Sleep.

Peace.

Six months ago today, things changed.
New York Remembers 9-11 Attacks

It was not that we were not aware of the presence of terrorist or terrorist attacks; we aren’t quite that naive. But never had we been attacked, like this, on our home soil.

Request for the Day: Take a moment to remember the victims and their families. If you were blessed and fortunate to not be directly affected by it, please consider those who were.

Peace.

To amend tonight’s post:

Quotes of the Day: Tonight’s episode of Justice League, “Brave and the Bold (pt. I),” was chock full of them.

• The Flash and Green Lantern, having stopped two scientists from stealing a truckload of experimental isotopes, hear an alert about an escaped gorilla. Locating the simian, who had just stolen someone’s car, Flash races after him. After a few blocks, Flash catches up to the car and, pacing it, asks: “Having fun, Mojo?” A nod to Cartoon Network’s own Powerpuff Girls.
• After Flash stopped the car, and while he was assessing the situation, he put a hand on Solivar, who said: “Get your stinking paws off of me, you filthy human!” A nod to Planet of the Apes. I’m sure that they couldn’t wait to put this line in when they were writing the script.
• A few scenes later, Green Lantern appears at a local police station; Flash has been arrested for stealing the same experimental isotopes… from the police impound yard. Green Lantern bails him out. As they exit the station…
  Flash: “Thanks for sticking up for me in there…”
  Green Lantern: *smacks Flash on the back of the head*
  Flash: “OW!”
  GL: “What were you thinking?!”
  Flash: “I wasn’t!”
  GL: (icily) “Obviously.”
  Flash: “Look, if I wanted the ‘third degree,’ I could have stayed in there! Like I told them: I don’t remember…”
  GL: “All right, then let’s start with the first thing you do remember.”
  Flash:“Let’s see. After I caught the gorilla, it told me that…”
  GL: *stare* “The gorilla talked to you…?”
  Flash: “Yeah, right after I stopped his car.”
  GL: (incredulously) “I’m supposed to believe this?!”
  Flash: Hey, we’ve both got a Martian’s number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt here.”

• After tracking down the still-at-large gorilla, Green Lantern blasts him… in what he felt was a defensive necessity. The simian, getting up, asks: “Was that really necessary?”
  GL: “Oookay, so he can talk. Who are you?!”
  Solivar: “My name is Solivar. I am Chief of Security for Gorilla City.”
  Flash: ” ‘Gorilla City?’ You’ve got to be kidding.”

• Solivar explains that he is on the trail of a rogue (and quite power-hungry) gorilla named “Grodd,” who had attempted to take over Gorilla City using mind-control techniques… like the one used on Flash to make him steal the isotopes. GL decides to call in the other members of the League when Flash interjects: “Why You think we can’t handle one dumb gorilla?” *looks at Solivar* “No offense. It’ll be a piece of cake.”
  He then dashes off, leaving Solivar and GL literally watching his dust.
  Solivar: “He is very fast.”

• Flash arrives at the lab where he and GL first learned of the isotopes.
  Doctor Corwin:“Don’t move.” She then fires a gun at him.
  Flash disappears offscreen… to tap the doctor on the shoulder, from behind.
  Corwin: How?!?
  Flash: “You blinked. Where’s Grodd.”
  Corwin: “I don’t know what you mean.”
  Flash: “Don’t play cute with me doc. Grodd. Your little monkey pen pal?”
  *huge simian fist punches Flash from off-camera.*
  Grodd: “That’s for the banana. I hate bananas.” Another nod to the original PotA movies.

One of the things that I love about this show, aside from the fact that it allows me to be a big kid, is the writing. It also has, what I consider, good production values; as I’ve said, it’s a very worthy successor to WB’s “Batman: the Animated Series” and “Superman: the Animated Series.”

But for now… bedtime.

Peace.

Sunday.

• Slept in.
• Performed Rituals d’Hygiene.
• Dad called; he set up a 3-way call between us and Rana. It seems tht she took off for a weekend in Kiev. She sounds well and says that she is still enjoying herself there.
• Rehoused my computer in a new case… which started out as attempting, unsuccessfully, to use a different motherboard/processor to upgrade. It seems as though one of three things may be wrong with it:
  1. The motherboard has “issues.”
  2. There was an IRQ or Port error in the way I set it up.
  3. “User Error.”
• Took Jess to work so I could ask our technicians a couple of computer questions… which they were, fortunately, able to answer.
• Went to Adrian’s for a bit.
• Went to Land’s for dinner and to network his computers.
• Home.

This, from , made me laugh. I found the original post on a random “Find User” search, but the follow-up comments were just as worthwhile.

Peace.