To Hear Some People Tell It...

I'm headed for non-existence.

Matt

The Day Of Reckoning Is Coming

So with this ridiculous primary season coming up I was looking into when Illinois votes and I came across what is variously called "Super Duper Tuesday," "Giga Tuesday," "Tsunami Tuesday," and wait for it...

"The Tuesday of Destiny"

The sad thing is that mostly things will be decided by then but I love the name. The 5th of February wasn't even given such a grandiose title when Andre the Giant beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF title back in 1988.
Matt

This is what my day looks like.

Matt

p.s. I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

The Captain Online

As far as I can tell we have about 4 readers. One of them just started his own blog. Here's The Captain's Blog. Those of you who know him know he's a funny guy. Go check it out.

Matt

Oh, the things I care about

I gotta give, as the kids say, props to my laptop, Yossarian, who has been on for 100 days today.  That's a new record.  Furthermore, he's been alive for over four years (his birthday was at the beginning of this month), and that's got to be something like 75 in computer years.  Well, I think it's probably time to restart this mother, so I can install some patches.

- Seth

Two Things I Can't Stand (But I Have No Choice)

1. Humidity. This god damn weather factor never seems to work in our favor. During the summer it is not uncommon to hear people say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" about 3 dozen times a day. Usually this is followed by someone else mentioning how they used to live in Phoenix, Tulsa, the Mojave or the Namib and that there it is only hot if you are in the sun. The shade apparently requires mittens and earmuffs.
So obviously the humidity is making the summer more miserable but where the hell does it go in the winter? You never hear anyone saying "Damn it's cold out there, but thank god for the humidity!" Clearly humidity is aligned with all thing evil and uncomfortable. Screw humidity.
2. The second thing I hate is less pointed. I hate that moment in between when you can see the bus stop and when you could catch the bus if it came. I spend that whole time dreading seeing the bus. Each morning I do my best to avert my eyes and ignore all sounds for about 60 yards on my way to the bus stop. This makes it hard to avoid cars and other people but it's early so there aren't many people out yet.
The bus stop at the El station is much worse. You can see my stop from the platform across the tracks and a parking lot. It takes about 5 minutes to arrive at the stop but you can't really catch the bus until the last 20 seconds. I've watched the bus go by many times there feeling totally impotent.

Matt

The Story of Stuff

My Mom just sent me this movie to watch. It's a 20 minute piece about the system of production consumption and waste that our culture promotes. It is worth the 20 minutes it takes to watch. There are parts that are a bit oversimplified but for the most part it does a good job of illustrating the insustainability of our current system. Check it out.
Link

Matt

p.s. When I watched it the video of the woman talking was a bit choppy but the animations and the sound were fine so I managed.

What A Crock

This clam was the oldest living animal ever found, at 405 years. I say was because some bastards killed it in order to tell how old it was. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever read. "I wonder how old this is." "Yeah, me too. Let's kill it and find out." Read about it and other exciting science news of 2007 here.

-Seth

A Good Feeling

Every so often I will see just a snippet of a movie preview or a poster or an ad and will be immediately convinced that it will be good. Perhaps this can be put down to good advertising but I like to think that I have a good firstimpressionometer for movies. Usually my meter goes off on movies that are no brainers, things anyone would guess that I would like. What's more fun and exciting for me is when I get a feeling about a movie that, on the surface, looks like it might really suck or at least is not really aimed at my demographic. As far as I remember my vibe has not failed me. A few examples of movies that were much better than they looked and for which I had a vibe are Eight Below, Dreamer, and George of the Jungle. Today I can add another movie to that list.
Seeing a few tv ads and a movie poster or two I was totally convinced that The Golden Compass was going to be great. Carrie and I just returned from the theater and I was dead on balls right. What a god damn movie! I won't go into any details about it here except to say that if you find that my choices in movies are usually pretty sound then trust me on this one and go see it as soon as you can.

Matt

Six Months Behind

I think I might be about six months behind the cool curve here but I just finally got around to really watching some parkour videos on YouTube. Here's an example to get you started but I recommend that you go watch a bunch of them.

link

Matt

I know people like this.

Matt