Monthly Archives: July 2005

Fantastic 4our

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Okay, we’re off to the movies to see Fantastic Four. The trailers look good, so I hope it doesn’t disappoint. It’s a nice day today, but a little hot for working outside, so the cool dark interior of the local multiplex is for us.

UPDATE: Hey, not bad! That turned out to be a pretty good entry in the “comix-to-flix” genre. At least I remembered more about their backstory than I did with some of the other movies (I didn’t know who the hell DareDevil was, for instance). I always like Johnny Storm and that “flame on” bit, too.

Chronic Flickritis

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A while back, everybody was talking about Flickr, this great new photo sharing and social networking site.

Well, it takes me a while to get around to doing what everybody else is doing, because I want to see first if it’s indespensable or not.

Turns out it’s not only indespensable, it’s like a virus – and I’ve got the bug bad.

It’s fun to play with, easy to use, and very cool when you stumble onto an interesting group of photos and realize “Hey, I took a picture that would look good here.

So far, I’ve joined a few groups that specialize in photos of specific places, a group pool tied to a news event, and a couple of random groups like “Beer” and “Flowers.” Now I’ve just found a group that’s about “art made by animals, or something destroyed by animals.” So I made my husband David find a better picture on his hard drive of the damage caused by the squirrel that attempted to set up housekeeping in the Holy Moly organ. And I suppose now I’ve completely succumbed to Flickritis.

My pictures and my favorites (pictures taken by other people that I think are great) are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginnyred57/http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginnyred57/

Semi Automatic & Fries

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Flickr

Why do the ball caps on these armed British police look so oddly menacing? Is it because in the movies the cops with ball caps tend to be the bad-ass sniper guys? But that’s not a sniper rifle, so I don’t know.

Still, now I may have to check out a “McFlurry” sometime soon.

Via: Flickr
By: tonypreece

Who added:

After today’s events in Leeds, and especially following two houses being raided just a couple of hundred yards from my home in Holbeck, I decided a night out was in order.

So I met my mate Mel on Leeds station, thought the extra police was a good thing, then I turned a corner to see a couple of cops carrying semi-automatic machine guns.

Not what you’re used to seeing when you live in the UK.

Later, I caught these two in Mcdonalds and couldn’t help taking this pic, a cop with a gun and drinking a coke through a straw, the other eating a Mcflurry ice cream..

Somehow it all seemed surreal, although he didn’t want his picture taken he didn’t mind me taking this shot when I explained how surreal it looked!

for blog entry see here.

Image title: Semi Automatic & Fries
Originally uploaded: 12 Jul ’05, 11.20pm PST

Get Down With Your Wacky Space Pants, Rock On

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I was bombing along the back lane of the company parking lot, which runs like slot behind the building when I looked up and saw this guy crouched down in the roadway fiddling with his shoe.

As I slowed down to a more moderate pace (after all, the posted limit is just 15mph) I waited for him to straighten up and move out of the way. And I slowed up some more, and waited. And waited. Finally, he finished and walked out of the way. He was a nice looking, even drop dead gorgeous black guy with a nice head of beautifully arranged braids.

I guess it was his gorgeousity that made him think he could get away with wearing pajama pants to work, in a lively pattern of great big cartooney yellow stars, moons, and Saturn-like planets on a purple background. They tapered at the ankle, which is already a mortal sin according to What Not To Wear. The color scheme was just… pure bonus.

They made me burst out laughing; otherwise he appeared to be a person of some couth. However, the wacky space pants were a clue that he was not so cool as he thought he was. Luckily for the two people who read this blog, there are no photos.

All Four

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BBC NEWS | UK | ‘All four’ July 21 suspects held

allfour.jpg

Now that’s what I call a satisfactory outcome, so long as they’ve got the right men. They thought they had a righteous takedown the other day, and we know how sadly that turned out. So I hope they’ve got the July 21 bombers, and I hope they’re getting useful leads to track down any more that might still be lurking about.

And… Rome? Zambia? Obviously this investigation could lead absolutely anywhere.

Hera The Soothsayer

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From what I hear, they are having a lot of problems with it and it may actually not be a rumor that it all gets canned. (I can’t tell you my sources so don’t even ask!haha) Personally, I think it would be a blessing in disguise because TAR is not meant for children!

Yes, that’s Hera McLeod of TAR6, commenting on the upcoming “family” season of The Amazing Race… the season that I think is going to suck big sedimentary rocks. As the OC register (subscription required, but try “slashdot/slashdot”) succinctly puts it, “One continent, four countries, 8,000 miles: John, Jennifer, Jack and Dakota, you are the official winners of ‘The Amazing Race Family Edition …”

Dude, you are so right, except I’m convinced the winners will actually be Brad, Breda, Brittni, and Brock.

All my previously disclosed misanthropy aside, coming out with a “family edition” of a popular show tends to hasten the “Xerox effect.” I mean, we watch 3 different versions of CSI in this house, and often discuss their differences and similarities in character, plot, editing, pacing, and even color palette. There’s no discernable loss of quality as far as my husband David is concerned, but he likes CSI: Miami, while I find David Caruso’s GIJoe-like repertoire of the same 3 stiff and unnatural poses distracting and annoying.

You know what I mean. There’s the one where he stands with his hands on his hips and turned slightly to one side of the camera, head lowered and eyes cut directly toward the lens or off into the dramatic horizon. Then quite often he’ll he’ll twist his head around or lower it and twist, then look up into the camera from below (often over his expensive sunglasses). And finally he varies his Mr. Bendy look with his head thrown back and turned to look down from what he apparently thinks is an imposing height.

So anyway, in spite of these minor tics, the three CSI shows are all fine, well crafted and even addictive examples of there genre. They may yet spin off a CSI: Hollywood, but what if they tried to come up with a CSI: Family Edition? We’ve already seen that – remember The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries? Or even Encyclopedia Brown? Meh.

And then, look what happened to Trading Spaces: Family. It took TLC months to get around to announcing the cancellation, but I’d assumed it was gone, and so had the people who actually watched it. I’d sure hate for that to happen to my favorite show. I hope Hera’s wrong about TAR8 “canning” the whole season, but then again maybe I hope she isn’t.

One more thing: it’s got to be stressful running a show like TAR with families, crew, and everyone else running around the world with major “extremist actions” blowing stuff up right and left. Plus you have rumors of a Space Camp-like task, followed quickly by a shuttle launch (yay!) and then worries about the future of the shuttle program again (yikes!). I’d hate to be a TAR producer about now.

The X-Acto Map Collector

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Chicago Tribune | Were treasured maps looted?

Check out this guy’s name: E. Forbes Smiley III. He’s a well-known dealer in rare maps – with a name like that, what else could he be? He lives in Martha’s Vineyard (of course). He was wearing a blazer when arrested (no doubt with a monogram or family crest embroidered just over the breast pocket). In another pocket of that blazer was a rare map that he had evidently just cut out of an old atlas at a Yale University library – a sharp-eyed librarian noticed an X-Acto knife blade on the floor near him and alerted security.
The Newberry is checking their collection now. So are other libraries that Forbes has visited in the last couple of years.

Every now and then, there’s a big case where old maps or illustrations or engravings are cut out of antique or rare books and end up on the rare documents market. This one probably made it “above the fold” media-radarwise because of Smiley’s status in his rarefied world.

Makes you wonder when you enter a shop of beautiful old documents and illustrations just how many of them came from the X-Acto colletion.

Not So Fast: Our Growth Is Mything

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Okay, okay, my sister Timmy wanted me to be sure I saw this article. But clever me, I had already stumbled across it elsewhere (names changed to foil “religious extremist” Googlers):

The claim that (Mmnsm) is the fastest-growing faith in the world has been repeated so routinely by sociologists, anthropologists, journalists and proud {Latte-less Aints) as to be perceived as unassailable fact.

The trouble is, it isn’t true.

Today, The (Charch of Latte-less Aints) has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths – Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups – have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.

And most telling, the number of (Latte-less Aints) who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.

One of these days I’m going to get over the lingering resentment stemming from my experiences growing up a “not” in Utah…let’s see, I’ll be 50 years old Real Soon. So maybe by the time I hit the century mark it won’t matter? For now, the occasional article like this one(extremely rare for a Utah mainstream paper) is still worth noting.

And yeah, changing the names is probably a little childish, but if I don’t, the Defenders of the Faith Oh My Heck Brigade will stop by for a cozy one-sided, thank-God-for-moderated-comments, spammers-will-be-ruthlessly-deleted debate. So what they don’t see won’t offend them.

Via donnunn.com | Several Salt Lake Tribune articles about the reality of membership growth in the (La-LA Charch)| Tue 07/26/05 22:10 (several more articles of interest linked)