| Round 2. |
[May. 2nd, 2005|11:00 am] |
I hadn't even completely cleaned up the glass from the last time my car was broken into for the purposes of stealing a $40 microwave when my less-than-one-week-old new window was smashed again to rip out my stereo.
Now I'm windowless, stereoless, and the whole front trim of my dash is mutilated.
Goodbye, $400. *mourn*
This is so unfair. |
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| Heh. Wow... |
[Mar. 28th, 2005|12:25 pm] |
Those of you who know me well will know that I am fascinated by the following types of connections.
Those of you who didn't know this now do.
Simon Jones, who played Arthur Dent in the BBC's 1981 true-to-the-book-but-otherwise-godawful Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV mini series will have a role as the Magrathean Announcer in the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film which is being released on April 29.
Cool.
Be that as it may, I'm scared of the new movie, having seen trailers, and especially having seen the mini series from 1981. So much of the humor of the HHGG came not from the story of Arthur, Ford, the Vogons, Zaphod, Trillian, et al, but rather from all the little asides, similes, metaphors and otherwise pieces of tangential writing with which Douglas Adams peppered his work. People didn't often *do* funny things, *say* funny things, or really even end up in funny situations. The *writing* was just funny. I think the screenwriters for the 1981 mini series were acutely aware of this, and tried to get around it by having the dialogue taken directly from the book. It worked, most of the time. Secondly, they had huge passages of the book simply read into the movie. With no dialogue. Just action. A voice-over for, like, 3 to 5 minutes of movie. That didn't work so well.
There some books, I suppose, that just don't adapt well to the screen. I'm still glad they're trying, and I'm still gonna be there foaming at the mouth to see it. |
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| How ignominious! |
[Mar. 9th, 2005|03:21 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  infuriated | ] |
I work for a company that builds machines that do nanolithography. Consequently, we have several Class 100 Clean Rooms on site for testing and assembly. I'd never actually had to go into one to work on a machine until today. One of the engineers was kind enough to help me get into all of the required gownings: soft shoe covers, hairnet, hood, facemask, gloves, overalls, and hard-shoe covers. It took about 15 minutes to get suited up before we went in. I was kinda excited.
After we got inside, people we coming around to check on the issue, and were smirkingly commenting on my presence. At least, it seemed as though they were smirking; it's hard to tell from behind a mask. I was sort of oblivious to it all. Following a partial solution to the problem, we left and I started to get out of my gownings. There were maybe four or five more engineers in the gowning area now, and they were all ribbing me and joking about me being there as I awkwardly tried to disrobe, knowing that I'd never been in the clean rooms before.
Suddenly it dawned on me...
I was being hazed! And *taunted*!
But that isn't the worst of it!
I was being hazed and taunted... by... by... *ENGINEERS*!
As the son of a physics professor, I cannot express to you the disgrace and disgust I currently feel.
Being taunted by engineers... What is the world coming to!?
*grin* |
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| Something for everyone... |
[Mar. 3rd, 2005|12:45 pm] |
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I think just about everyone who might read my more-than-infrequently updated LJ can find some kind of interest and/or humor in this story |
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| Holy crap! |
[Jan. 17th, 2005|01:35 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  excited | ] |
I've been asked to join The Bedlam Faction theatre company as an Artistic Associate! WOOOOOO! |
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| So, it occurs to me... |
[Jan. 16th, 2005|01:46 pm] |
So, there's this fundamental biological question that asks:
"Why do we age and die?"
... and an equally fundamental answer that says:
"If organisms do not age and die, they will overpopulate and destroy themselves through an over-extension of their ecosystem. Aging and death are critical evolutionary traits."
If you leave it at that, then fine. Good. Dandy.
But wait a minute. How do you select *for* a trait that is structually opposed by a main, if not THE main tenet of evolutionary theory? If you're going to select for "aging" followed by "death" (as opposed to "famine" followed by "death"), you're going to have to select for it pretty early on, or else the whole evolutionary process never gets to, say, aardvarks and bus drivers.
Would it not be possible for life to have had a couple of "false starts" on Earth with immortal autotrophs who died from starvation after their local food supply ran out? Then, eventually, a group of autotrophs finally appeared that were genetically coded to age and die, and the whole process of getting to aardvarks and bus drivers started. It would certainly lend a hand to the theory that life on Earth is inevitable if it wiped itself out a few times in the beginning.
Anyone? I'm ignorant on such matters... |
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| Ugh... |
[Nov. 3rd, 2004|12:34 pm] |
Stayed up late watching returns.
I have a terrible feeling that these hangover-like symptoms are related to the election results, not anything I consumed.
Four years isn't that long, is it?
Is it?
Blargh. |
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