April 2002 Archives

Seven words on Office Space:

Why was this ever recommended to me?

~Or Jackie's version: ~

You can live without ever seeing it.

--

Seven words on Farscape's Season Finale:

You have got to be kidding me.

~Or Jackie's version: ~

Are you sure there isn't another episode?

Rey has posted a metric assload of stuff on the new Star Wars Toys, so I'm not going to. Two things.

1. Yeah, the Amidala toys are naughty. Yowsa. Cave-me wants.

2. DO NOT CLICK ON THE SPOILER LINK he mentions unless you REALLY want to see the spoiler. Trust me, it can wait until the movie. (I already knew about it via other venues, but most people won't, and you DON'T WANT TO KNOW, trust me.)

A few days after you left, there was a bad storm. It happened in the middle of the night the way all the really bad storms do. I watched it through the double-wide windows that functioned as the head of my bed at the time.

You had been there to see me the weekend before and I was thinking about you. The visit had started out pretty well and you’d had a look in your eyes that said you intended good things. Very good things.

Of course it didn’t work that way.

I don’t know if there’s a way to explain: the lights were out, the room was dim, and when you walked into the bedroom you just looked so much like her. I was so surprised that I said exactly what I was thinking before I realized how it would sound, and that set the tone for the rest of your visit.

So a few days later I lay in bed watching the water run down the window and let lightning burn afterimages on my retina. The pillow you’d slept on didn’t smell like your perfume. The sheets didn’t smell like your skin. There was no romantically symbolic indication that you’d ever been in my house. I suppose that was fitting.

The next morning the neighborhood was littered with leaves and branch bits. I watched people sweep the walks or rake their lawns as I got ready for work.

I hadn’t called you.

I wasn’t going to.

I had admitted to myself that I didn’t know what to say. I think that was the first time I’d felt comfortable in three years.

A Virtual Boromir 2002 Calendar. You're welcome.

Panic Room :: Forrest Whitaker is great. Jodie Foster plays... that role that she does very well (hyper-competent asexual woman). The photography was very good.

In the end, it wasn't (a) what I was expecting and (b) as good as I'd hoped.

I humbly submit Ghost Dog as a better Whitaker movie, and... well, frankly, I like Foster, but her movie roles are practically interchangeable -- put a short-wave radio in the panic room and it could have been a set in Contact -- Dwight Yoakum could have started saying "it puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again", and I'm not sure I would have noticed.

I loved the brownstone, though. Great set.

The new Alanis album, Under the Rug Swept.

Jackie purchased it, and I heard it last night. Here's my take: If you go in expecting Alanis, you will not be surprised by any part of this album, either pleasantly or unpleasantly.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

Me: Okay - Angel takes Wes' hand or tries to kill him?
Jackie: I'm gonna say takes his hand.
Me: I'm thinking he'll try to kill him.

[seconds pass]

Jackie: Good call.

Right, enough geeky talk about the website, let's talk about my PDA!

[crickets chirping]

Please?

~

Anyway, not much to write about this. I did get a PDA. I opted for:

• Lots of downloadable software.
  
• Long battery life.
  
• Affordable color.

From that, the real geeks should be able to not only determine the brand, but the model. Real geeks who also know me might even predict the color.

Here's a few things I've learned already.

Infrared communication is pure magic: Unreliable, impervious to modern logic, and vaguely unsettling when in action.

Buying three-packs of pda stylus' actually does make sense: at least, it does if you chew on anything held near your mouth for too long and regularly lose things -- in other words, I'll should be buying them by the dozen.

Lithium Batteries for the Palm last a really long time: for me (and you won't believe this but it's true), this mean that it takes me 4 whole hours to tap 50% of the battery life.

While I was home for Christmas, I drove around the old home town to see who I could run into.

Unlike all my previous visits, most everyone was there, either down at Turtle Creek Saloon or the Hi-Lite. I wasn’t sure what my reception was going to be like, but it turned out well: a lot of people had been reading my website and were really in to what I was doing. South Dakota doesn’t have much, really, in the way of celebrity -- after Tom Dascle and Mt. Rushmore, they’re pretty much out of ammunition, so that night, among my old High School buddies, I basked in a rockstar-like glory. People drove me around town, and told me about parties that were going on in the next few days and that I should definately come.

When I got back to my folk’s house, I confided to my mom that it was already the best visit home that I’d ever had, and I hadn’t even gone hunting yet.

Of course, I’d forgotten to get a license, so I had to take care of that the next day.

I drove back into town in my pickup to buy a pheasant license and backed into a space in front of the pizzeria/movie rental shop/Sears outlet that also sold the permits I needed. (Yeah, in South Dakota, you can’t really specialize.)

When I came back outside, my pickup was partially blocked in by this other car. I tried pulling out but I kept tapping bumpers, no matter how much I hauled the wheel over to the left, so finally I just put it back in park and waited.

That was when I noticed the cops on the other side of the street. There were at least five, all out in front of the Clothes Garden (retail chains don’t really like South Dakota, btw). They were all heavily armed and peering in the windows of the store. I couldn’t really see what was going on, so I pulled my gun out of it’s case in the passenger seat and used the scope like a telescope to watch the action. It probably wasn’t a good idea to point a gun at a cluster of cops this way, but no one was looking my way.

All but two of the cops crept inside and started weaving through the circular racks of clothes, pistols out and crouched. I watched, and realized that I could see where the guy they were after was hiding. The problem was, I didn’t have any way of warning them, so I kept watching.

The cops in the store were clueless. They walked right by the guy about 5 times, until he finally got cocky and made his move, slipping past the deputies in the store and out a side entrance that led back to the front sidewalk.

He came out right behind the sheriff, who was a nice guy I’d known a long time. I only had one choice, so I squeezed the trigger and dropped the guy. The cops didn’t know what was going on, and by the time they’d gotten a clue, I’d pulled out of my space across the street and was driving calmly in the opposite direction. The only thought I had about the whole thing was that I’d have a really good story to tell at the party I’d been invited to that night, and that my sights were adjusted a little high and to the left.

~

It was a pretty wild dream.