Random Access

Friday
Our friend, Lisa, got married this afternoon. The wedding was held at Log Haven, in Millcreek Canyon. It was a small affair; I believe that there were thirty guests (if that many). It was a short, but very nice ceremony followed by lunch. We had met Matt, the groom, a few times before. Nice guy. He’s from Australia; they’ll be moving there in a few weeks. (We’re considering a trip there sometime in 2006 or 2007.) We also met members of both their families.

An odd note about Millcreek Canyon: It’s free to go into the canyon, but there’s a fee that must be paid to exit it.

A great benefit of the wedding being held in the canyon: We got above the fog/smog layer that has been blanketing the SLC Valley for the past three days. It was refreshing to see real, honest-to-goodness blue sky and sunlight.

This evening, before Friday Night Coffee, I got a new phone, a Samsung A620. It’s smaller, but a little thicker, than my old phone. And, hopefully, it will not drop as many calls as its predecessor.

There was a really good turnout for coffee tonight: , , and Matt, Dave, Steve and Leah, Dave and Alyce, and Dave were there. At this rate, we are going to have to start numbering the Matts and Daves in our group. We referred to the two Daves, collectively, as “Dave (not Dave).” Apologies to Was (not Was), but it was convenient. The Dave occasionally known as (not Dave) started referring to himself as “!Dave,” which for non-computer geeks is pronounced “Bang Dave.” After leaving the bookstore we headed to Cheers: North for a bite to eat. Apparently, someone decided that it was a good night to play the All-80s channel for the music. (BTW: (not Dave) – you were correct: Top Gun came out in 1986.) I don’t remember how, but our conversation took a dip into the “Who had really good on-screen chemistry in the movies and on TV” realm. g0t random conversation topics? We do. Lots of them. And plenty of non-sequitors, too.

News
Morning Edition: Grocers Look to Provide More Diverse Products
Morning Edition: DJ Looks to Brean On-Air Endurance Record
Morning Edition: ACLU Gets Behind Rush Limbaugh
Day to Day: Promoting the Tougher Vows of ‘Covenant Marriage’
All Things Today: A Twentysomething Takes Umbrage at Media Monikers
All Things Considered: How Cold Is It? Well…
All Things Considered: An American Woman’s View of the Hajj

Random Access
“Those who know what’s best for us must rise and save us from ourselves…”

Let me get this straight: Spongebob Squarepants is promoting a “pro-homosexual agenda?” According to James C. Dobson, he is. Not only that, but he’s apparently enlisted Barney, Big Bird and Clifford the Big Red Dog to help him recruit kids.

What happened to the days when a cartoon was just a cartoon? When did we start turning jaded eyes towards the most innocuous things and seeing them as looming threats to our ways of life? Apparently, it’s okay for Wile E. Coyote to mercilessly persue – with the express intent to kill – the Road Runner, but Heaven forbid that our children be led astray by a sponge. A talking sponge. An asexual, talking sponge.

As my father would say, “That doesn’t even make crazy peoples’ sense.”

Many people would say that America has made great strides forward in the name of social progress and advancement. I’d say that this is true. To a point. There are still glass ceilings that women and some minorites can’t break through. Ethnic Group A still marches down Main Street, USA because they want to public extoll the fact that they hate Groups B and C. And don’t even bring up Groups X, Y and Z… It’s sad to admit, but there are still cases that prove that “…with liberty and justice for all” has not fully lived up to the assertion that “…that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

That’s right. I don’t know what’s going on behind your closed doors, but I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t fit my narrow-minded paradigm. I’d better take steps to see to it that you can’t do those things here. My white-picket fence world can’t have you bring any of your different viewpoints into my neighborhood.

It’s a damned cartoon, you nimrods. Here, let’s look at this from a different angle:

• How many times have you seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs, after pulling a fast one on Elmer Fudd, plants a big kiss on the befuddled (no pun intended) hunter? On the lips, at that. Does this mean that Bugs and Elmer are secretly carrying on an affair? Should we not allow our children to watch classic Warner Brothers cartoons because they might see this?
• Popeye the Sailor – paragon of manly, vegetable-eating underdog virtue – walks around with a pipe. Not only that, his young nephews do, too. See, kids? Smoking’s okay for you! And, if I remember correctly, he has bussed Bluto on the lips a couple of times, too. AND, if memory serves correctly, in the classic Popeye cartoons (not the ones of the late 70s and the 80s), he resolved most of his conflicts by fighting. That’s a good one for the kids: Eat your veggies and then go pound the snot out of someone!

But, now we have an animated sponge hanging out with his buddy… and all of a sudden they must be gay. Right. So… were Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (the cartoon, not the recent movie) promoting homosexual orgies? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think so. Were The Banana Splits pushing the Furry/Plushy agenda? Somehow, I doubt it. And what about The New Zoo Revue? Were Doug and MaryJo secretly telling kids that bestiality was okay? Umm… no.

Nine Hells.

It irritates me that someone has nothing better to do with their time than to invent ways to “prove” that something is evil and wrong. And since I’ve gone off on a “why parents should parent their kids” rant not too long ago, I won’t get back on that tangent. For now.

Spongebob, gay?
Idiotstick. No, make that “Idiotstick with a pulpit.”
</rant>

Stray Toasters

• I finally got around to posting the pictures from the last couple of trips to Moab, including the pics of snow on the redrock that I promised .
• What You’ll Wish You’d Known
• Power Pack is back. This was one of Marvel’s more… “fun” titles of the late 80s/early 90s. Four kids, given powers by a dying alien… and hiding those powers from their parents. I’m not sure if I like the new manga-esque look, but I might have to give the book a once-over.
• 
• Someone’s about to snap of a little somethin’ somethin’…
• : Confucius and I finished this week’s crossword in 15 minutes.
• Try a “Solve-It Mystery” from MysteryNet.com
• A Softer World

Quote of the Day
On the way to Lisa and Matt’s wedding, and I wound up having to take a slight detour, due to an accident on I-215. We hit a particularly dense patch of fog along the way. This sparked two or three different comments from . Unfortunately, they all tried to come out at the same time. What came out was:

“It’s worse foggier up here…”

That’s when she realized what she was saying and stopped talking. And that’s when I started laughing.

Namaste.

Thursday
Today was a good day.

and I had lunch at one of the local V.I.s (not Cheers, though). She said that she saw my idea about painting the HCC in LEGO® colors and thought that “…it sounded so you.” It made me laugh. But, if I paint the walls in those colors – and assuming that I get my projector this Christmas – I’ll have to get a screen for watching TV and playing vidgames. I may, however, paint the tops of the walls in those colors, though…

In another effort to make things look “home-like,” I hung up my IKEA rug on one of the walls in the basement stairwell. Now, I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of my wall-hangable items.

>> fast forward >>

After a tasty dinner from Thai Garden, Chris taught and me how to play Heroclix. (Nox had a bit of a head start on me as he has played the fundamentally similar Mage Knight before.) Nox and I teamed up against Chris. And had our clocks cleaned. Pretty handily. We took a couple of his characters off the board, but he wiped out four of our six-member team and had two of his original four still standing at the end of the game. But it was fun. After all, what kid doesn’t like to play superhero?

News
Morning Edition: Moderate Drinking May Help Prevent Memory Loss
Morning Edition: ‘Angels and Demons’ Draws Tourists to Rome
Day to Day: How Hail to the Chief Became Official
All Things Considered: Tracing Family Roots Through a Name
All Things Considered: New Clues Emerge in Pre-Dinosaur Extinction Event
All Things Considered: Dabbling in Virtual Real Estate

USA Today: Coca-Cola makes it ‘Real’ with new flavors, energy drink, ad campaign
USA Today: Tiny frog a Big Island issue
USA Today: Top actors moonlight at Sundance Film Festival

BBC News: ‘I Don’t Like Monday, 24 January

Stray Toasters

• I remember how I would hear the phrase “guerrilla warfare” as a kid and think that they were talking about gorillas that had been trained to fight. It caused much confusion in my young brain.
• sent me a link to this article. Former President David Palmer (portrayed by Dennis Haysbert) is returning to 24 this season!
• For those of you who haven’t read about it yet: The reason behind the Great LJ Blackout of 2005
• Are Apple’s 4, 20 and 40 GB iPods a little out of your price range? Well, there’s still hope for you to join the legions of iPod users: The Apple iPod Shuffle, starting at $99.00 USD.
• These guys don’t stand a chance. Really. I’d give better odds to a snowball in Hell. Case in point: 1, 2, 3.
• By way of boingboing.net: “Jenna Hearts Satan” T-Shirts
  (And that’s Jenna Bush, not Jenna Jameson, for the record.)

• : A Hush Falls over Gotham: Lieberman Talks Gotham Nights and Hush
• Is it just me or should Boomerang just change their name to “The Scooby-Doo Channel?”
• pointed me in the direction of this piece on deviantART: Vanity.

Quote of the Day
The Guide in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy now has a voice. English Actor Stephen Fry, got the nod.; if you are a fan of books-on-tape, you may recognize him as the narrator of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Here is what he had to say about being selected as the voice of The Guide:

“It’s like having your birthday on Christmas Day, discovering a winning lottery ticket in your stocking and having chocolate poured all over you.”

And, while looking up info on him, I came across this gem, too:

“It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.”

Namaste.

Wednesday
I talked with the ‘rents today. All’s well in their respective parts of the Right Coast. I need to call the sibko tomorrow and make sure that they’re doing well.

Tonight was Game Night. I think that we’re moving the story along, albeit slowly. While there are probably more than “a few” things that our group has overlooked, we picked up on something that will be of relevance down the road. That’s probably a good thing. Tomorrow night, Chris is giving and me a crash-course in Heroclix. That should be fun.

Thursday is “Inauguration Day” for the Shrub. Big whoop. On the other hand, federal employees in Washington are getting a free day off; some are taking Friday off and making it a long weekend.

News
Morning Edition: Study Recommends New Approach to Diagnosing Kids’ Depression
Morning Edition: Senegal Postcard: Celebrating the Feast of the Sheep
Talk of the Nation: Ohio: Sports and Mentality (for )
Day to Day: Firings Raise Questions of Blogger Freedoms
All Things Considered: Beer Ad Battle Spills into Realm of Science
All Things Considered: Report Finds National Zoo Has Made Progress

silicon.com: Spammed Man Sued by Alleged Spammer Wants Cash

Stray Toasters

• I spent about ten minutes this afternoon rearranging the Magnetic Poetry tiles into their respective parts of speech. Ostensibly, this will make it easier to find words/phrases when composing a put-down. But, the truth behind it all is: The insistence of my inner grammar geek was too strong to resist.
• : I’m not sure if you’d be interested in this, but Steve Jackson’s e23 is up.
• New… episodes… of JLU and Teen Titans… starting 05 Feb 05.
• I still haven’t formatted the new drive for DS9, but I came to a decision this afternoon: I’m going to put either a 20 GB and a 40 GB or two 40 GB drives in Enterprise. I like my media and it deserves plenty of elbow room.
• There’s something about Ludacris’ Act a Fool that I like. Quite a bit, in fact.
• David Duchovny, in an interview for The Sun, has said that a sequel to X-Files: Fight the Future is in the works.
• While I usually don’t like to give the cats “people food,” every once in a while, I will cave and share a little something with them. Today I discovered that Presto likes spaghetti noodles.
• “No walls can hold me!”
  “That’s why we brought tasers.”
  

• Utah drivers…
• Sh’mo (…for Nyx)
• It looks as though they are trying to adapt Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress for the big screen. Here are more details from Tim Minear, who is working on the adaptation.
• We’ve started looking at paint samples. I think that I’d like a blue shade in the main bathroom (but I’m not dead set on it, yet). I’m also not sure what color(s) I want to use in the HCC. Given my LEGO® obsession, I’m trying to stay away from primary colors… but I might consider a LEGO-like four-color border. Of course, I could just go with green, at least on one wall. And even though the Master Chief’s armor is green, I’d probably go from referring to it as the “HALO Command Center” and start calling it “New Oa.”
• “If you wake me up coming to bed, I will dismember you.” –

Namaste.

Tuesday
I. Am. Tired.
(Not to be confused with I.M. Weasel or I.R. Baboon)

Today we replaced two furnaces in a house on the East Bench. Two very old, very heavy furnaces. I also picked up a few new skills today, so that was cool. Carrying the furnaces, however, not cool. I was amazingly tired by the time we got done. By the time I got home, it was all that I could do to get into the shower; I knew that if I took a bath, I’d fall asleep in the tub. Instead, I fell asleep after my shower – I sprawled out on the bed… and was gone. Thirty minutes later, I felt nominally human again.

That set up a very relaxing (read: “lazy”) evening. I watched Law and Order: SVU and after that went off, I channel surfed. I wound up watching Underworld. It was… “not completely horrible.” It was a decent diversion/distraction. I’ve played a game in White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” setting and I can see some of the things about which they were crying “foul.” But, it’s nothing too far removed from any vampiric and/or lycanthropic lore. Maybe it’s just me, though. And, it could have been worse. Like Innocent Blood. *shiver* I mean… really… Don Rickles? As a vampiric mobster? Puh-LEEZE.

News
Talk of the Nation: Saving Teens in Trouble
All Things Considered: Public Schools Struggle With Bipolar Students

Stray Toasters

• I found a gap between the window and the sill in the HCC. At least that helps to explain why it’s always colder down here than the rest of the house. (When I checked, it was 8° colder than upstairs.) I caulked the part of the gap that I could reach without completely opening the window. I’ve also put up some plastic sheeting over the window. I can already feel a bit of a difference.
• Hey, …. Cover to Issue #5
• got a Magnetic Poetry: Put-Downs set for Christmas. After poker, we all huddled around the refrigerator and came up with ideas. It was like the Soul Train Scramble Board on crack. One of my favorites: “I see that you set aside special time for the Dumbass Fairy.” I’ll post more quips as we come up with them.
• It looks as though DC is putting a new spin on OMAC. This could prove interesting.
• : Build your own Batphone
• : The Name of the Game
• In case you haven’t heard: The Incredibles will be released on DVD in March and new episodes of Family Guy will air in May.
• Ob La Di, Ob La Da
• Old or Obsolete Names for Diseases and Disorders
• What do you get when you cross Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Peanuts?
  

• Leave it to G4TechTV to screw up yet another thing. No, that’s not entirely true. I shouldn’t blame them; I should blame their parent company, Comcast. As if firing many members of the TechTV staff wasn’t enough or even the way that they focused more on the “G4” than the “TechTV,” now they’re dropping TechTV altogether and will return to the gamer-oriented programming for which G4 was known before the G4-TechTV merger.
• Hugh Jackman and Clive Owen appear to be the front-runners to be the next James Bond.
• By way of disinformation comes: Modigliani: An Artist Between Worlds
• Marvel Comics has had success with most of their recent cinematic outings. Hopefully, that will continue this summer with Fantastic Four (trailer).
• “That’s the biggest barrel I’ve ever seen, is it pump action?”
  

And that’s a wrap.

Namaste.

Monday
Good Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to all.

Today was a good day. and I ran some errands this morning… including a trip to one of my new favorite toy stores: Lowe’s. *genuflect* There are far too many things there that I wouldn’t mind having. Far too many, indeed. We then headed to the local Best Buy… and we now are the proud owners of two XBoxes. (I have not yet checked what the new Xbox’ name is, though.)

We had lunch with and then came here to hang out for a bit before poker started. This “hanging out” included watching a few minutes of Spice World on Showtime. Yes, that Spice World. It was bad enough that we might just have to get drunk, watch the movie and MST3K it. Tonight’s poker was good; there were seven of us at the table. The final three were:

1. Dave
2. Nyx
3. Me

News
Morning Edition: Unforgivable Blackness: Jack Johnson’s Saga
Morning Edition: Readings from King’s Dream Speech
Talk of the Nation: The Future of Civil Rights Groups
All Things Considered: Scientists Assess Value of Publicizing Their Work
All Things Considered: A Love Affair with Skateboarding

The Progressive: Martin Luther King, Freed from the Straightjacket

Stray Toasters

• As Utah is now observing the holiday as “Martin Luther King, Jr. Day” (and none of my friends stuck their feet in their mouths), I didn’t have to snap my virtual foot off like I did last year. I consider that both a good thing and a step forward.
• From Kodak.com: How wide is America?
• The Mongols in World History
• : Here’s a preview of LSH #2.
• Someone on Yahoo! Groups’ “Lilguyz” community made this. It made me smile.
• Are you tired of having to create a login for news websites just to read one or two articles? If so, you will want to check out bugmenot.com.
• From the C2F DCG: Classic Storm
• Zig-a-zig-ah… (for Nyx)
• Any Highlander fans in the audience? Yes? Okay. You might be interested in this.
• I found this in a copy of Stuff at Nyx and Nox’ place. I’m not sure if I should laugh… but I did.

I should have been in bed an hour ago. I have to get up in the morning and help with a furnace replacement. And so…

Namaste.

Sunday
Today’s been a good day. I spent the early part of it trying to be productive. No, really. I did! Stop laughing. That’s just mean.

*sigh*

Like I said: I tried to be productive. However, the table that now resides along the north wall was begging to be utilized. So, I accommodated it. I put my LEGO® train together. Well, I started putting it together… a little before Kate, Perry and Max came over. (I managed to get the engine and coal car assembled before they arrived.) We hung out. We had dinner. We sat around and talked some more. I even managed to keep Max off the XBox tonight… by showing him the joys of railroading.

After they left, I assembled the passenger car, freight car and caboose while watching the World Poker Tour on The Travel Channel. I finished the cars and added them to the train. Here’s the end result. I watched the train around its oval many times. Sissy and the twins weren’t exactly sure what to make of it, though. Next up: The Rokenbok monorail.

Monday is Martin Luther King Day. If you are fortunate enough to have the day off, please do not simply look at it as “…just another holiday.” If you haven’t done so before, why not take some time to learn about both the holiday and the man that it commemorates?

Stray Toasters

• According to Human for Sale, I’m worth $2,465,492.00.
• Alan Davis is drawing Uncanny X-Men. That’s a good combination.
• So how did you get to be a Nazi? –
• Cotton candy. Two bags. *nod*
• Electronic Arts is thinking about creating a television show… based on… The Sims. Do we really need this?
• I still need to lobotomize DS9 and I believe that Defiant will be put in spacedock for a refit, too – it will become a Linux or FreeBSD laptop. If nothing else, that will force me to wrap my brain around the *nix OS.
• : This week’s high score was 181.
• Saturday, we picked up a dining room set and a futon from ‘s sister. With the addition of the new futon, we actually have a real, honest-to-goodness “guest room.” Of course, it’s currently being used as a transition room, while we find homes for the things that we (still) haven’t unpacked.
• We can walk our road together
  If our goals are all the same
  We can run alone and free
  If we pursue a different aim.

• : Here’s an interview about Hayao Miyazaki

That’s it for tonight this morning.

Namaste.

Saturday
(…even though it’s really Sunday morning…)

LiveJournal is finally back.
I’m back from Moab.
(Okay… I got back Friday afternoon, but let’s not quibble on the details.)

And I’m tired.
I have something or some things that I want to jot down.
But they’ll wait.

At least until tomorrow.

And if they don’t, they must not have been that important.

Namaste.

Tuesday
Wow.

We made it to Moab.
It was snowing like nobody’s business at the top of Soldier’s Summit, but we made it. I’ve heard the term “whiteout” with reference to snowfall, but I’d never really experienced it until 9:30 this morning. There are probably… five (if that many) people I would trust to make that drive; , as it stands, your father is in the #1 spot. Once we got past the Soldier’s Summit and headed down into Price, it wasn’t so bad… although, the Highway Patrol closed Route 6 Northbound just as we were getting to Price.

The weather here in Moab has been… crappy. It’s been raining, intermittently, for most of the day. That doesn’t make outdoor work very pleasant. But I muddled through it. Until it started to hail. At that point, I went to the other site (the inside job) and did a few things until the storm passed.

I’m tapped. I believe that a hot shower is next on the agenda.

Not sure if I’ll update again before I get back to SLC (hopefully on Friday). Hopefully, the ride back won’t be as slow/snow-filled as the ride down.

Namaste.

Monday
I slept horribly last night.
This morning.
Whatever.

I’m not sure why. Hopefully, tonight’s journey to The Dreaming will be less fitful.

We got on the road to Moab this morning around 8:00. It was rainy in both the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys. Traffic was bad. Wait… I’m talking about Utah morning rush hour. Make that: “Traffic was worse than usual.” I caught the tail end of something about an accident at Soldier’s Summit (which is on the route to Moab) as Jess dropped me off this morning – a semi went off the road. That made for less-than-auspicious thoughts about taking a chance in going today. So, we’ll try again tomorrow.

So, today became “Errand Day.” Tonight, we’re having dinner with a couple of friends and then it’s “Poker Night.”

News
Morning Edition: Mossberg: PC Industry Needs to Address Security Issues
Morning Edition: Cancer Risk Seen in ‘Green Earth’ Dry Cleaning
Morning Edition: Father and Son Prepare to Ship out to Iraq (When I listened to this, I was reminded of the end of Starship Troopers – the book, not the movie – but I also wondered: “Doesn’t this remind anyone by me of Saving Private Ryan and the potential problems therein?”)
Day to Day: Slate’s How They Do It: Paper or Plastic Money
All Things Considered: New Jersey Struggles with Overburdened Foster Care System
All Things Considered: Taking Lessons from a Guru of Listening
All Things Considered: Guinea’s Kantè Highlights Traditional Roots on New Album
Fresh Air: Actor and Musician Ice Cube: Are We There Yet?

BBC News: Mass DNA test for US murder town
BBC News: IT support for your parents
BBC News: Alert over Harry Potter web scam
BBC News: Singer Seal hits out at rappers

Stray Toasters

• I need to start considering names for the soon-to-be-built computer.
  Sidenote: While perusing the list of ship names on startrek.com (My computers are named for ST ships… *DUH* ), I discovered that there is at least one episode of DS9 that I haven’t seen. Oddly, it looks as though I have seen every other episode from that season.

• Speaking of computers: According to this article “The Commodore 64 sold more than any other single computer system, even to this day.” I had two of them (and a C-128, too). I still have one of the 64s; it’s hiding in a box in North Carolina.
• “Charlie, how your Angels get down like that?”
• posted an entry containing a link to an article entitled: Vatican Offers Course in Satanism and Exorcism. My inner anarchist, not to be confused with “inner Anti-Christ,” compelled me to respond.
• Welcome to Cudgels ‘R’ Us
• Tori Amos as Delerium
• A few years ago, before I moved to Utah, a friend gave me a copy of Eeyore’s gloomy Little Instruction Book. I’ve been looking for it for a while and just relocated it this afternoon. It makes me laugh because it reminds me of an odd story about getting in contact with the REC here, when I was trying to transfer my position:
  

  Shortly after getting the book, I picked out a couple of quotes and used them for my home voicemail:

  Nobody tells me. Nobody keeps me Informed. I make it seventeen days come Friday since anybody spoke to me.

  Owl flew past a day or two ago and noticed me. He didn’t actually say anything, mind you, but he knew it was me. Very friendly of him, I thought. Encouraging.
  … a couple of seconds of dead air and then the *beep*.

  I got a call from the the REC’s HR office.
  And another.
  And a third.
  In a row.

  The first call was someone who was unsure if they’d dialed the right number and, after hearing the message, hung up. The second call was the HR supervisor, who still sounded unsure as to whether or not it was the right number, but decided to leave a hesitant message anyway. The third call was the supervisor calling back and in the background, she was telling someone, “You’ve gotta hear this…”

  This makes me smile because the same supervisor who kept calling became the manager that I made cry a few years later.

• I need another computer case and power supply.
  Well, I don’t really need it, but it would be really nice to have it.

• posted an entry in asking for someone to explain the meanings behind four songs. Ô.õ I decided to take a look at her LJ to see if I could figure out how old she was. I went nearly blind before making any determination. Here’s why. After my vision cleared, I checked her user information page and found that she is only Sixteen. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the No Doubt reference.)
• By way of Broken Frontier: In Search of Joe Madureira
• By way of Comic Book Resource’s “Lying in the Gutters” column: When the Chinese news media reported the death of Will Eisner, in his obituary, they used a photo of Michael Eisner.

And that’s my 2¢ worth.

Namaste.

Sunday
Since I didn’t get to bed until nearly 6:00 this morning, I slept in until after noon. Again, the cats were cooperative and allowed me to enjoy the respite.

I lazed about the house for a bit and then headed to Borders to get in some drawing time. I did one piece from a business reply card as a warm-up of sorts. Then I looked through a couple of photography magazines for something. I found it in the January/February 2005 issue of American Photo. Inside is an article about XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. The article’s lead picture in the article was of Gina Lynn… and that’s what I drew. (Thanks to for the use of her scanner!) The scan didn’t pick up some of the more subtle shading, but you get the general idea.

Home for dinner and the first half of the season premiere of 24. I’d almost forgotten how much I like this show. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch tomorrow night’s continuation.

I headed over to visit and for a little while this evening. Tea and talk are always a good way to end an evening.

News
Weekend Edition – Sunday: Sunday Puzzle: Roundabout Phrases and Savings
Weekend Edition – Sunday: Jill Sobule: Singer, Actress, Crossword Addict
     (see also: jillsobule.com)
Weekend Edition – Sunday: Rebuilding Iraq’s Once-Prized Library
Weekend Edition – Sunday: For Sale: One Biosphere, Gently Used

New York Post: Columbia House Plans Porn Club

Stray Toasters

• For reasons that I have yet to determine, snippets of Billy Joel’s Allentown and The Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice have been running through my head for the past couple of days. In a couple of odd bits of serendipity, I heard both of them today.
• : Frank Miller will be writing All-Star Batman and Robin
• It seems as though the voice actor for Marvin the Paranoid Android, from the upcoming The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie has been selected. A few of you might recognize this person.
• has drawn another Rocket Mouse picture. Go! Now!
• From PBS’ I, Cringely: Betting a Billion: Bob’s Predictions for 2005
• The Digital Media Winners and Losers of 2004.
• Bullies for Hire
• How good are you – or do you think you are – at U.S. Geography? Try Place the State and see how right you are. Be warned: It’s very picky about being precise about where you place states: I got 48 perfect out of 50 turns with an average error of 6 miles.
• : This should put a smile on your face.

I should hit the rack soon. Very soon. I have to get up early so that I can increase Moab’s African-American population by at least 50%. We are doing a couple of installations: One sub-grade and one inside. I don’t think that there’s a bike ride planned this trip – which is good, since I don’t feel like wrestling the bike into the car.

And with that… I’ll be back Wednesday or Thursday.

Namaste.

Saturday
First off, Happy Birthday to January-born LJers:

• (belated)
• and

Today, I took a page out of ‘s book and slept in. Way in. And the cats even cooperated and let me sleep. Who would’ve thought that possible?!

It was a mostly lazy day. We headed to the VF Factory Outlet to pick up a few things. That place is dying. By inches. Some of the stores with big names behind them are holding on, but I don’t know how some of the smaller ones are making it. Still, if you’re in the SLC Metro area, you might want to head down to Draper and check it out. You can still find good bargains there. And, if you’re a man who wears a size 7 or 7½ shoe, the Bass Shoe Outlet should be your new best friend.

Tonight’s bowling was all right: Out of seven games, my high score was a 162. and bowled as well, while watched… and did a henna tattoo on one of the boys from the lane to our south… as his girlfriend watched… and fumed. It was amusing. From there it was on to breakfast. met us in the parking lot; was waiting for us inside. People drifted in over the next half-hour or so. We didn’t leave until after 3:00 AM.

News
Weekend Edition – Saturday: Customer Service in the Age of the Web
Weekend Edition – Saturday: The World’s Love Affair with Caffeine
Weekend Edition – Saturday: BBC Remakes Canterbury Tales for TV
Weekend Edition – Saturday: The Donnas Graduate to a New Class of Rock

Wired News: Laser Wielder Faces Big Penalties

Random Access
Everything old is new again…
I was listening to the radio while out and about this evening and heard the Goo Goo Dolls’ cover of Supertramp’s Give A Little Bit. I don’t really mind covers… IF the cover band can do something to make the song “better” or at least add something new to it. There was nothing “unique” to the GGD version that I could discern. On the flip side, Rush released Feedback, a CD of cover songs, in the Summer of 2004. I was familiar with most of these songs as done by their original artists, but the way that they are performed on this CD… they “feel” like Rush songs. They put their own spin on them. And that’s a “good” thing.

Likewise, while I don’t have a problem with sampling an old song for a new hit, do something to give the song a little bounce. I think that ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, Will Smith, George Michael and even M.C. Hammer (before he went gangsta and definitely before he went broke) are all good at this. However, I have yet to forgive Garth Brooks for what he did to Aerosmith’s Fever.

Now that I’ve gotten all of that out of the way…

What is it with the latest trend of simply trotting out someone else’s old song? I realize that the musical scale limits you to twelve notes and that you have a limited number of octaves with which to work, but come on… Has so much been done in the world of music that there’s nothing new to be written? Somehow, I doubt it. At least, I’d like to think not. In the case of the aforementioned Feedback, the members of the band said that these are the songs that they played when they first started practicing together, still enjoy playing when they are in the studio and that they wanted to share that with their fans. I can respect that. And, as I mentioned before, the covers come through with a Rush “signature” that not so much “breathes new life” into the old favorites as it “puts a fresh face” on them. And, speaking of “putting a fresh face” on a song, according to NPR’s All Things Considered had a story in which the question “Can a band plagarize itself?” In the story, a Canadian music fan accuses Nickelback of doing just that.

Maybe Barenaked Ladies weren’t too far off the mark when they sang It’s All Been Done, after all, it’s been said that there are only eleven or twelve original plots for stories and that everything else is just a rehash of something that came before. The Spirit of Radio proclaims “One likes to believe in the freedom of music.” There are those of us who still believe that there are still new and different songs to be sung, as well.

Stray Toasters

• Gateway’s new “Stampede” commercial is amusing and makes me laugh.
• I discovered PopCultureShock this afternoon. I like it. And… they have plethoric buttloads o’ neato-keen wallpapers, too. In fact:
  • : Click here and here.
  • : Click here.
  • : Click here.
• It’s pretty well-known that Sissy the Wonder Kitty doesn’t like “people food” (unlike the twins, who will eat almost any and every thing that you put before them). Although I’m not quite sure how, discovered that Sissy likes peach juice.
• Y’know… I enjoy listening to bagpipes playing Amazing Grace. I’m not sure whether or not it is solely due to Star Trek II: Electric Boogaloo Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but I’m pretty sure that has a little something to do with it.
• Battousai the Manslayer.
• If you don’t know some secret way you can check on,
  You’ll break your neck on
  Naughty Number Nine.

• I understand that some stories require a bit of exposition to help advance the plot, but I get tired of just how much exposition that there is in some anime stories. Case in point: Any of the Dragonball series. DBGT is a current guilty pleasure, but like Megatokyo, the long and overly drawn-out stories are causing my interest to wane.
• Megan Mullally, possibly best known as Karen on Will & Grace, can be seen – and heard – in the latest M&Ms commercial: “Nothing Rhymes with Orange.”

It’s much later than I had planned on being awake.
I am going to rectify that.
Right now.

Namaste.

Friday
I got home around 1:00 AM.
For the first time since 10:00 Friday morning.
I’ve been out and about all day… and it was great.

I started out with breakfast at one of the local IHoP restaurants with , her husband and one of their sons. It was nice. The food wasn’t bad and the company was good.

From there, I was off to pick up Perry and Max. I gave Perry the copy of Green Lantern: Rebirth #2 that I picked up for him and he gave me a bunch of his extra Heroclix figures (and a CD with miscellaneous gaming stuff). We went on a tour of some of the city’s gaming shops. We also hit The Gateway – Perry had never been there. On the way back to their house, we wound up sitting on the Great Salt Lake Parking Lot (or “I-15,” as it is more commonly known). Utah drivers. I love it when it takes a half-hour to go less than five miles.

I picked up and we headed off to Friday night coffee. We had a good-sized crowd tonight: , , , , , Perry, Max, Steve, Leah and myself.

And ! This is the first time that she’s been back behind the Zion Curtain and, if I remember correctly, the first time that I’ve seen her since “The Great Moving Trailer Load-Up of 2004,” this past summer. And, even after ALL of that, she wouldn’t let me tackle her when I saw her. (A Special Merit Award goes to for setting up a pretty solid body block just before I got to , too.)

We had good – and typically strange – conversations over coffee, tea and other beverages. Most of tonight’s group might be getting together for 2-D Physics tomorrow night, too.

News
Morning Edition: Preacher Arrested in 40-Year Old Murder Case
Talk of the Nation: Deflecting Near-Earth Space Hazards
All Things Considered: Rethinking the Word ‘Jihad’

Stray Toasters

• Thanks to Perry, I have the Heroclix counterparts of the Teen Titans, both the Cartoon Network and the long-running New Teen Titans lineup: Changeling/Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven, Robin and Starfire.
• LEGO® case mods
• A friend on IRC showed me a URL for Akiane, a child prodigy. She paints and writes poetry. And all that I can say about her work is “Wow.”
• Neil Gaiman’s Mirrormask is set to premiere at Sundance this year. I would like to see it. I should probably see if there are any tickets available for it.
• And speaking of Mr. Gaiman, I have no idea to whom I loaned my copy of Smoke and Mirrors. And I’m wanting to read it again. Although, in the meantime, I am enjoying the book that sent me: made in america: an informal history of the English language in the United States
• Stardust for All Ages – Broken Frontier’s take on Stardust Kid
• Jeph Loeb on his plans for the summer debuting Supergirl seriesAlthough this picture, by Michael Turner, still shows her with the Torso of Doom©, Ian Churchhill will be the regular artist on the title.
• From Something Awful’s “Photoshop Phriday” – Mechs in Art
• Does anyone else remember NPR’s Schickele Mix, hosted by Peter Schickele (also of P.D.Q. Bach fame)?
• A Knight’s Tale. I never saw the movie, but for those of you who did, would it be fairly safe to say that it could have been renamed 2 Medieval 2 Furious?

Namaste.

Thursday
We awoke to yet more snow.
And that means…

Shoveling!!!

I shoveled the entire driveway and sidewalk and part of our neighbor-to-the-north’s walk. The whole thing took about twenty minutes. And, that even includes the time it took to walk down a couple of houses and ask one of our senior neighbors if she needed help with her driveway; she declined, saying (with a smile): “I’m only pushing the snow.” But, I had to offer.

I spent the late hours of the evening enjoying a mocha latte and a powdered sugar and cinnamon crepe in the company of , and .

News
Morning Edition: Soldiers Set Up Makeshift Tattoo Parlor in Baghdad
Day to Day: Slate’s Moneybox: The Gift Card Blessing, Curse

USA Today: Appeals court throws out Andrea Yates conviction
USA Today: Magazine names Seattle as fittest city, Houston as fattest
USA Today: Warnings about toilet brush, scooter win Wacky awards

BBC News: Mandela’s eldest son dies of AIDS
BBC News: Physics goes in search of ‘cool’
BBC News: Poverty fight ‘neglects science’

Stray Toasters

• For a few years, I’ve toyed with the idea of making a chess set. Not from scratch, mind you. Well, not totally from scratch – I want to make the board out of wood and ceramic tile. For the pieces, I have considered using fantasy RPG miniatures to do a “good vs. evil” kind of set.

  This afternoon, I was thinking about the Heroclix figures that I am collecting and I had an apostrophe epiphany: I can make a comic book geek’s dream chess set: The Justice League vs. The Avengers. It made my inner nine-year-old smile. It even made my outer thirty-four-year-old smile, too!

• I looked under chairs.
  I looked under tables.
  I tried to find the key
  To fifty million fables…

• : I’m not sure if you’re still a fan of theirs, but Bowling for Soup will be in concert at In The Venue on Wednesday, 26 Jan 05. Tickets are $13.50 in advance and $15 the day of the show.
• The Rolling Stones’ Beast of Burden came on the radio the other day. At some point, I started only half-paying attention to the song. When the chorus came up, instead of hearing
  

  I’ll never be your beast of burden

  … I heard …

  I’ll never be your Easter Bunny

  It made me laugh a lot.

• I dislike getting forwarded emails with eleventy-seven sets of headers in them. Sure, I know that you’re forwarding that “cute” or “fun” or “neat” or… “something” email that someone sent you. That’s fine. What I do not need is the name and/or email address of every monkey-squeezin’ person that they sent it to or from whom they received it originally.
• 
• , I have to admit that you were on to something a few months ago: Joss Whedon does a good job with everyone’s favorite children of the atom.
• …and speaking of the Marvel’s Merry Mutants: Phoenix: Endsong #1 Sells Out
• forwarded me this link of before and after pictures of areas where the southeast Asia tsunami struck. Wow.
• The Stepford Missionaries. (…with a GMTA *nod* to )
• For …
  

• Kevin Spacey has been named to play Lex Luthor in Bryan Singer’s upcoming Superman movie. I can (easily) live with that. The only question now is will he be the classic criminal scientist/mastermind or will he be the wealthy industrialist? And… will Singer make any moves to show Luthor as the President of the United States?

Quote of the Day

We are the custodians of our life’s meaning.
    – Unknown

Namaste.

Wednesday
I don’t know what my body does while my mind is in The Dreaming, but whatever I did last night hurt. I woke up this morning – and not for the first time – with a painful knot in my upper back. tried massaging it out, but she said that it feels like one of my vertebrae is slightly out of alignment. Joy. She said that I have a VERY tight muscle cluster near my right scapula and that it might be nudging things out of their proper alignment.

Other than that, the day was good. And it included coffee and a bite to eat at Jitterbug (that’s 1855 S 700 E, for those of you in the SLC Metro area) with Nyx. She, and I headed to Trolley Square to check out a game store. It’s a pretty decent place. And they had Heroclix® singles. I picked up a Booster Gold (“Thank you, Green Lantern…!”) figure along with a Checkmate medic.

And tonight was Game Night. The game was a bit disjointed, so there wasn’t a lot of progress. Hopefully, our next session will prove more fulfilling. After the game finally broke up, Chris and I got into discussions about what’s gone wonky with the Star Wars series (George Lucas + crack = bad), comic book-based movies, gaming and a few other topics of geekdom. We also gave Nyx a crash course in a couple of comics-related topics. And her head didn’t go all ‘splodey. At least, it didn’t while we were there.

News
Morning Edition: Sing Sing Seeks Temporary Guests
Morning Edition: The Hidden Costs of Rooting for the Yankees
Talk of the Nation: Beginnings of the Calendar
Day to Day: Tabla Master Aloke Dutta

USA Today: Wreck costs three Tennessee salt trucks

The Ledger: Washington Judge Nixes Pregnant Woman’s Divorce

Stray Toasters

• I had planned on recording tonight’s season premiere of Alias. But, I got so engaged in a couple of things that I wound up spacing it off. To be honest, I’m not sure that was such a bad thing. I’ve missed the last season and a half of the show. Maybe I should catch up with what’s going on in Sydney’s World (Party time! Excellent!) before trying to jump in at this point. *shrug* Then again, I might just try to play “Guess WTF’s happened while you weren’t watching.”
• “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?”
• : I have a 6/12 Amp battery charger, if that would help. Let me know if you could use it.
• : legionnaires.com
  Not all of the year links (top of the page) work, but the ones on the left side of the screen do.

• “Okay, I think I’m drunk enough now… –
• In today’s “Resistance is futile…” news: It seems as though LiveJournal has acquired by Six Apart. People have been archiving their journals as though the Seventh Seal¹ has just been broken. Here’s a novel idea: Rather than quiver with fear, why not wait until the dust has settled and then decide whether or not LiveJournal is still for you.
• For …
  

• From National Geographic Magazine: Caffeine
• “nucular Toonami”
• Comic Book Goddess: The World of Comics, Through the Eyes of a Girl – A new column from Broken Frontier

Quote of the Day
Two quotes, two sources.

Quote #1:

Once upon a time, history was made on the battlefield.

Heroes chose to fight for justice… for honor…

…for glory and for faith…

…for survival. And, in time…

…all the fighting was done.

With the help of interstellar alliances, the Earth entered a millennium of utopian peace.

Now, at the dawn of the 31st century, all we, our parents, and their parents have ever known is security, stability and order.

We’re so sick of it, we could scream.
   – Introduction from Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (v6)

Quote #2

Life is a diamond you turn into dust.
Some people can’t deal with the world-as-it-is, or themselves-as-they-are, and feel powerless to change things — so they get all crazy. They waste away their lives in delusion, aimless rage, and neuroses, and in the process they often make those around them miserable too. Strained friendships, broken couples, warped children. I think they should all just stop it. That is called wishful thinking.
   – Neil Peart from Rush’ Roll The Bones tour program

Namaste.

¹ – Those of you familiar with The Book of Revelation will be one-up on the kids who skipped school that day.

Tuesday
There’s something about waking up a few minutes before it’s time to actually roll out of bed and just lying there and enjoying the warmth of the bed, covers pulled up to your chin. Knowing that you’re stealing those last few moments of bliss before joining the race.

Semi-cocooned.
Impervious, if only for a short while, from whatever exists outside your door.
Outside your bedroom.

Then, in seemingly too short a span, it’s time to get moving.

A couple of highlights of the day included dinner with , and . And a Heroclix® figure of The Shade (complete with top hat).

Stray Toasters

• I am out of cotton candy and caramel popcorn. I shall have to remedy that. I do, however, have pistachios. And Toblerone white chocolate. So all is not lost.
• The spell-checking function wants to be your friend. You should let it.
• Neurotica
• Will Eisner, best known as the writer/creator of The Spirit, passed away on Monday. Neil Gaiman had this to say (excerpted):
  

  I interviewed my friend Will Eisner a few year ago, at the Chicago Humanities Festival. At one point I asked him why he kept going, why he kept making comics when his contemporaries (and his contemporaries were people like Bob Kane — before he did Batman — remember) had long ago retired and stopped making art and telling stories, and gone.

  He told me about a film he had seen once, in which a jazz musician kept playing because he was still in search of The Note. That it was out there somewhere, and he kept going to reach it. And that was why Will kept going: in the hopes that he’d one day do something that satisfied him. He was still looking for The Note…

  Will Eisner was better than any of us, and he kept working in the hope that one day he’d get it right.

  You can read the rest here. Wizard Universe had this to say about Eisner’s passing.

• In a related note: Former science fiction, MAD Magazine and comic book illustrator Frank Kelly Freas passed away on Sunday. More information here.
• 
• Just weeks after Todd McFarlane Productions filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Dreawmwave Productions announces that they will be shutting down operations.
• : Broken Frontier’s review of Legion of Super-Heroes #1
• An artist on the C2F Digital Concept Gallery came up with a manip of Colm Meaney (ST: TNG/ST: DS9) as Banshee. Interesting concept. I could actually buy him as Mr. Cassidy.
• I’ve posted images of Image Comics’ Ultra in here before. You can read the entire first issue here, courtesy of Newsarama.com.
• Extreme Ironing. I… don’t know what to say.
• By way of Backwash: Switch Zoo.

Quote of the Day
I mentioned yesterday that I was rather taken with the newest incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as writtten by Mark Waid. Here are a couple of examples of why:

Science Police Officer: This won’t cheer you up. A team of Legionnaires has just been spotted in the A.I. District. They’re fighting an experimental macrobot gone wild.
Science Police Chief: Then get our men on it! Tell them I want them to assess the scene, give me projected alpha and beta strategies, compute a valid situation contingency, and await my orders!
Officer: Right awa– Hmm. Its’… taken care of, sir… The Legionnaires nullified the threat.
Chief: HOW? What did they do?
Officer: Apparently, they… they hit it, sir.

…and after defeating the macrobot and facing down a squad of Science Police officers…

Shadow Lass: Think the Science Police will bill us for their weapons?
Star Boy: They’re free to pick them up whenever they like. They’re right here. They’re in plain sight.
Shadow Lass: You gave them the mass of a white dwarf star.
Star Boy: They might need a crowbar.
(The team flies off, back to headquarters)
Star Boy: Hey, let me be the one to tell Cosmic Boy we won this one, okay? I’ve been on his bad side ever since the Fusionstrike case.
Shadow Lass: If I were leader, you’d be on my bad side, too.
Star Boy: It. Didn’t. Look. Like. A. Bomb.

…and…

A team of Legionnaires has beaten back an army that has been “punishing” (read: “attacking with their full force of infantry and weaponry”) teens who espouse the Legion philosophy.

Victory plus one day.
Star Boy and Invisible Kid are standing atop Legion HQ looking out over a plaza full of 31st Century youth.
Invisible Kid: What happened to you?
Star Boy: Macrobot head.
Invisible Kid: Ow. What are your powers, again?
Star Boy: Increasing an object’s mass and ignoring bombs.
Invisible Kid: That would explain the pit in the east plaza. How far did you sink it before it detonated?
Star Boy: To about natural-gas-pocket level.
Invisible Kid: That would explain the fire in the east plaza. Hey, you’ve been with the team a while. I have a question about all the kids down there. All the time. Living outside our headquarters. Why don’t we just let them inside?
Star Boy: Let them–? Do you not remember, like, six months ago? Aaah. I probably shouldn’t be shocked that ther was no newslink to it on the infogrid. It made us look too good. The Science Police had reached the end of their extremely exhaustible patience with us. They were past the point of caring who had a right to be where. They just wanted the Legion gone.

So we woke up one morning to the sound of grav-impact bulldozers headed for this building. I’m talking about machines that could level a moon. There was no way that even we could have taken them down in a fight.

But we didn’t have to.

Those guys down there stood up — I mean to a one, they stood up — and they marched forward and they formed a human shield around the whole plaza. It was the second-most amazing thing you can imagine.
Invisible Kid: What’s first?
Star Boy: That they’d do it again if it came to it. They’re free to come inside whenever they like. They choose not to. There are a lot of cool things about being with the Legion, my friend, but never forget the coolest…

They’re not here because of us…

…we’re here because of them.

And that’s all there is from Lake Saline today.

Namaste.