JF :: Brain Farts :: Archive of June, 2008

Archive of June, 2008

Just a Little Behind Schedule

June 30, 2008:

For those eligible, the "economic stimulus" payments have been getting sent out since mid-April. Since a check for several hundred dollars is always welcome 'round here, I checked the IRS site to see when I'd be getting my money.

Not bad, I should have a check in my grubby little fist by the beginning of June.

I then used the "where's my check" online widget, and got back... nothing. The IRS apparently didn't have a clue when they'd be sending it out. I decided I should call the IRS and get this figured out.

Then I forgot. Hey, I still haven't gotten the dog to the vet, and I haven't had a physical since 1994. Remembering things ain't my strong suit.

Anyway, I checked again recently, and here's what their app had to say:

Hmm... May 23 to July 4. Never mind that I doubt anything will be happening at the IRS offices on Independence Day. They're barely into the checks and they're already 6 weeks behind schedule. Efficiency only the government could love.

Edit, 7/6/08 9:17 AM: And in my mailbox on Saturday I had a check dated July 4th. Now it's possible that there was a drop directly at a USPS hub and the check was really issued on 7/4, but I'm going to go with the IRS sending me a post-dated check so it could match the date in the Where's My Money app.

Programming note: Since my best weeks tend to produce three blog posts nowadays, I've shifted to a MWF schedule instead of leaving gaps in a MTRF schedule like I've been doing. Change goes into effect tomorrow (no post) and Wednesday (new post).

Things You Don't Want to Say When You Get Home From Work

June 27, 2008:

"Why does it smell like shit in here?" Ah, the joys of owning a dog.

Yeah, she was sick from something. She seems to be feeling better now, which is good, and she was constrained to the kitchen while I was at work so everything was on the linoleum, but cleanup was still not anywhere near what I wanted to do as soon as I got home.

Fool Economy

June 26, 2008:

With gas staying over $4 per gallon for me (damn my car and its appetite for premium gas) I started wondering whether I should have looked for a diesel engine instead of my gas-powered one.

OK, my car went 294.1 miles en route to its last fill-up, at which it took 12.276 gallons -- my worst mileage in a while. Instead of the usual mi/gal measurement, I'm going to flip it over to a more European measurement style and figure it in gal/100mi.

That gives a slightly more accurate way of measuring usage -- I don't set out to drive a certain volume of gasoline. Just remember that small numbers are better now.

12.276 gal/294.1 mi = .04174 gal/mi, or 4.174 gal/100 mi. Not bad.

Using similar math, a Jetta TDI tops out at about 1.667 gal/100 mi. Kick ass. 2.222 gal/100 mi (45 mpg) is closer to normal usage, so I'll use that.

Now we need to convert this to dollars per 100 miles, since diesel costs about 60¢ more per gallon than 93-octane gas. I'm using $4.099 for gas and $4.729 for diesel, which is where things sat Monday morning.

VW Jetta 2.0T = $17.11 / 100 mi
VW Jetta TDI = $10.46 / 100 mi

So basically, I'd be saving about $900 a year compared to now, considering how much I drive over a 12-month period. And I knew gas was going to stay expensive when I bought the Jetta.

I never said I was bright.

... Cocksucker Motherfucker Tits

June 24, 2008:

Edgy comic George Carlin dies in L.A., aged 71

There are a few things I can blame George Carlin for, my generally twisted way of looking at things being one. Oddly enough, the fact that I cuss too much (the title above notwithstanding since it's a reference) isn't his fault, since I was cussing up a storm well before I ever heard any of his routines. I developed that bad habit all on my own.

George Carlin often said that he viewed humanity as an outsider, having fun watching the rest of us circling the drain. I can understand the cynicism and frustration, but I doubt he was as detached as he wanted us to believe. After all, comedy requires a connection to the audience, and if he was truly that much of an outsider there would have been no connection.

I figured it was his way of trying to effect at least some kind of change -- get us to laugh at our collective idiocy, then maybe we'll actually try to do something about it once we leave the theater, or put away the CD. Dunno if it worked or not; our species' spiral seems to have gotten somewhat tighter over the last several years. Or at least, the US's has.

Maybe despite his protestations, Carlin was actually an optimist at heart. The line between an optimist and a cynic, after all, is really just a matter of how disappointed you are with everyone else failing to live up to your ideals.

The retrospective on Countdown Monday night seems to bear this out -- Carlin mentored young comedians behind the scenes, and specifically asked not to be credited. Of course, if you're cultivating an image as a bastard you'd do well not to let on that you're actually a good guy.

Of course, there's the fact that he hadn't been funny for at least a decade, so maybe I'm right about that connection thing, and he finally tipped the scale from "curmudgeon" to "misanthrope". But if you want some of his best material, check out anything from the early 1970s (when he started doing the "seven words" routine) through the mid-1990s (whenever "You Are All Diseased" came out). Everything before is too generic, everything after is too pissy.

In my perusal of various sites Monday afternoon, I saw that his first wife died about the time he was doing "You Are All Diseased." That may explain why he made the transition from cranky to angry. I'll have to look as his most recent work to see if he ever got his balance back.

So if someone gives you grief today, try to imagine the institutional stupidity at play there, and chuckle to yourself instead of letting it get you down. Or tell the guy to go fuck himself; either one can work.

TV Review: Battlestar Galactica 4-12: "Revelations"

June 19, 2008:

Without getting into spoilers for the mid-season break, all I can say is, damn. Someone tell Ron Moore that the Magnificent Bastard is supposed to be a character, not the showrunner. 'Cause apparently if the writers strike had continued, this would have been the series finale.

Well, things started picking up in the previous episode ("The Hub") and they kept that pace up for the whole show. D'Anna takes all the Galactica pilots still on the basestar hostage, and threatens to do them all in if Lee (now president) doesn't hand over four of the Final Five. (The fifth, it seems, wasn't/isn't with the Colonial fleet.)

After Tori eagerly jumps ship to be with "her people", D'Anna spaces one of the pilots to prod Lee into speeding things up with the other Finals. And Tigh shows that he's got himself a set of big, mechanical, brass ones when he outs himself to Adama, then tells Lee to threaten to shove him out the airlock if the Cylons don't stand down. And says to bring Tyrol and Anders along for the ride.

Standing in the airlock, Tyrol and Tigh both look like they're ready to die, and probably think at this point that there's nothing left to lose. Both their wives are dead -- Ellen by Tigh's own hand -- and both probably feel they'd be killed once they were discovered anyway. Why not go out on your own terms, right?

While Lee's trying to work up the nerve to commit cold-blooded murder and Baltar tries to talk D'Anna out of some more helmetless space walks, Starbuck discovers that her magical Viper is picking up a Colonial transmission from Earth. Instead of, y'know, picking up a phone she runs what appears to be the full length of Galactica to tell Lee that they've been given the way to Earth.

After a little speechifying (Lee could stand to study under Captain Picard here) the Cylons and Colonials say to hell with scouting and just start jumping in the direction Kara's plane said to go. An indeterminate time later, they flash-foomp into low orbit over a pretty blue planet.

Gaeta says the constellations match, so this must be Earth. Adama gets on the 1MC and tells everybody that they've found their new home, hallelujah, So Say We All. Lee does his imitation of Bobby Flay, and hops up on the DRADIS console for a fist-pump. A jubilant Colonial crew suits up and drops through the atmosphere...

...to find a nuked mess of what used to be a city. Possibly Brooklyn, according to people online who're familiar with the NYC cityscape. Nothing's growing, the sand makes a Geiger counter go nuts, and the buildings have all basically collapsed into jagged metal heaps. The now-stricken Colonials and Cylons stagger, unbelieving, across the beach, until one simply mutters, "Earth."

Fade to black, thanks for playing, see you in 2009.

I teased the writers a bit, and I didn't really go into a lot of detail, but this was a damn good episode. It basically grabbed a hold of me in the teaser and didn't let go until about 5 minutes after it went off the air. No meeting up with the Federation, no Adam and Eve retelling, no flying motorcycles. Just the planet they were looking for, dead. Goddamn.

I have nothing else I can contribute, so I'll have to do like I did with Iron Man and tell you to just watch it. Watch the last few episodes, you have time.

And now, if you'll forgive some fanwank, I have a wild-assed idea about the Cylons and the Final Five.

OK, the Cylons. Why are the Final Five not the last five model numbers (1-6 are "regular" Cylons, then Sharon's an 8)? Why is there a 7-5 split?

Because it was originally supposed to be 6-6. Well, actually, 1-1.

After the meat-machine hybrid experiment shown in "Razor," two fully-humanoid Cylons were created: The ones we now call Cavil and Tigh. With a newfound addition to the decision-making process -- emotion -- they came to strong disagreement over the human "problem." Cavil, as now, wanted to kill every last man, woman and child in the colonies. Tigh wanted to find a means of eventual rapprochement.

At this time, resurrection technology and memory-sharing were being developed and both Cavil and Tigh saw the need for more than two models of humanoid Cylon. Tigh, however, felt that the ability to resurrect and share memories would remove the two advantages humans had: uniqueness and the desire to stay alive.

Taking a cue from the Colonials' own mythology, Cavil and Tigh decided to have 12 models of Cylon. Cavil and his creations would be 1-6, Tigh's people would be 7-12. Cavil's first creation was Leoben (#2), who enjoys a good mindfuck. Tigh's first attempt was Sharon (#8) who was young and impressionable.

Too young and impressionable, as she was convinced to side with the "original" six. That's why Sharons tend to "lose themselves" in each other's memories: That ability was added on later.

That's why Sharon, number 8, is out of order.

And since I'm going to shown to be horribly wrong about this, I'm going to leave my WAG about Earth/Terra out of here :)

Movie Review: The Incredible Hulk

June 17, 2008:

I saw Hulk opening weekend, and still haven't made it to the latest Indiana Jones. After Saturday night, I'm fine with that. Given what I've heard about Crystal Skull, Hulk is the better movie.

The movie picks up where the first one, five years ago, left off. Except, it doesn't. Sure, Bruce Banner is still in Latin America, but now it's Brazil instead of Guatemala and his origin story is more like the comics than the attempted wangst-fest Ang Lee hoisted on us. In the reboot, Banner is conducting experiments on protecting people from gamma radiation. He's really working on a supersoldier serum for the army, which was tried and abandoned during World War II, and as a human-level test he irradiates himself and instead of dying turns into the Hulk.

And then he ran away to hide while the army chased him. Five years later, he may have a potential cure on his hands, but he needs the data him and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Ross, collected before he became an unwilling superhero-in-training.

Basically, this is Marvel's way of saying the 2003 movie didn't happen. Ignore it, nothing to see here. And that's just fine.

This is much more of a straight-up action movie than its ersatz predecessor, and it lacks the depth of Iron Man. But there's only so much you can do when your alter ego only speaks six words over the course of the film. (In case you're curious, they're: "Leave me alone," "Hulk... SMASH," and "Betty." But c'mon -- we got a "Hulk Smash" so it's all good.)

In a nutshell, this movie was good fun. Nothing really out of the ordinary or unexpected. The Abomination kicked much ass (or arse, I guess, since Tim Roth is a Brit). We get a setup for another of the Hulk's nemeses. We even got a cameo by Lou Ferrigno as a security guard. And we get Hulk Smash.

One thing the director did was show Banner's mind showing through sometimes, even if he wasn't in control all the time. It's a well-worn cliche at this point that Betty can bring him back, and during his fight with the Abomination he had a "Jesus Christ, can't you just leave me alone?" look on his face. Of course, the Abomination was punting him through a city block at the time, so the Hulk had his reasons too.

We also got a cameo by Robery Downey, Jr., as Tony Stark, and you don't have to sit through the credits to see it. Again, setting up for an Avengers movie in a few years.

Now I'll admit that I'm a little short on detail -- again, it's the Hulk; what detail do you need? -- but this was a good movie. Call it 8.5/10 and worth the $10 to see. Even worth the $6 for a popcorn while you're there. Not quite as good as Iron Man, but that movie pretty much struck the balance perfectly so there's no shame in not catching lightning in a bottle twice. Still: Go see The Incredible Hulk. I doubt you'll regret it.

Odd Ways to Injure Myself, Part II

June 16, 2008:

A couple years ago I figured that one of these days I'd hurt my shoulder or back by trying to open the trunk of my car. Well, I was able to trade it in before doing myself any damage, which meant I had to find another way to hurt myself. It took me a while, but it's every bit as stupid.

As I've said, I have a dog now. And, being a puppy, the dog likes to play. So most nights I'll plop myself down on the floor and play tug-of-war, or play fetch, or wrestle with her. She's actually more partial to the wrestling, which just goes to show that a 35-pound dog ain't the brightest critter in the world.

Since I'm the larger animal by a factor of 5 or 6, I need to make sure I don't hurt the dog. I'm a wuss about stuff like that; I'd feel bad for days if I did. So I try to "steer" the dog away from obstacles like furniture, walls and so on, because she'll happily bonk her head against anything solid and unmovable, to the point that I sometimes wonder if she's given her self a concussion.

Anyway, we were wrestling Saturday morning, and as she tried to squirm away I noticed her head aiming itself straight for the corner of the wall. So I twisted a little bit and managed to keep her from hurting herself (and the wall).

And by "a little" I mean "a little too much". I don't know what I did, but my whole upper back was sore for the rest of the day and it hurt to sneeze. My back is still a little stiff as I write this Sunday morning but a night's rest seems to have helped.

So yeah, I hurt myself playing with a dog 1/6 my weight. Which goes to show that 185-pound humans ain't the smartest critters in the world either.

Movie Review: Bleach: Memories of Nobody

June 13, 2008:

The movie from the manga and anime Bleach was released in the US this week. I saw it Wednesday on the big screen in Fair Oaks. Spoilers ahead...

Overall it was good. I'm not familiar with the anime, only having read the manga (and only the first nine volumes at that) but the pacing was mostly well done and the characters seem to have progressed from where I see them at my years-behind-the-times vantage point.

That said, I do have some complaints. The new character, Senna, was introduced as a half-comic, half-manic, half-ADD foil for Ichigo and Rukia. (Yes, I know that's three halves. There's overlap.) As the movie progresses she becomes a more sympathetic character, but that doesn't change the fact that they could have dialed her down a bit at the beginning. By the time Senna and Ichigo got to the mall the first time I was ready to throttle her.

My only other real complaint is plot-induced stupidity on Rukia's (and many others') part. It's understandable that Ichigo may not know about Blanks and the Memory Jewel (sorry, I can't remember the Japanese word they used for it), but Rukia and the others being unaware or needing Hat 'n Clogs to play Exposition Man for them is just lazy. Even a simple "let's take care of these quick, I'll explain later" would have been better than leaving a trained soul reaper ignorant of her job.

Since this is based on shonen manga there's plenty of fighting, and you know the movie's almost over and the Boss Fight is ready to start when Ichigo and the others arrive in the Valley of Screams and start rearranging the landscape. A bit like DBZ in that regard, but better drawn.

And finally, there's the reveal of Senna as the Memory Jewel, and that she can control the Blanks and stop the Soul Society and the World of the Living from colliding. I probably should have seen it coming -- Bleach ain't High Plains Drifter or The Usual Suspects -- but I was just enjoying the ride at that point. My real beef is with the reset switch they pulled at the end. I realize that anime movies tend to operate outside the normal continuity and thus need to clean up after themselves. But saying that since Senna never really existed that they'd forget her as the Blanks' energy dissipates seems pointless.

In my mind it would have been better that they do remember her, though they softened the blow a bit by having Ichigo catch a glimmer of a memory when he sees her ribbon the next day. Maybe I'm just jaded from watching too much Star Trek as a kid, but if you're going to spend an hour and a half doing stuff, have it mean something when it's through.

So anyway, there you have it. If I had to assign a rating I'd say it's a 7 out of 10 or so. Worth seeing on the big screen, but maybe not worth $10 except that they only showed it once a day so it's 10 bucks or nothing.

Out of Town Again

June 06, 2008:

Due to a family emergency -- my father's brother just died on Thursday -- I'll be out of town and back in Akron for a couple days in the near future. More information once I find out when the service is. In the meantime, if you send me something over the weekend and I don't answer right away, that's why.

Edit: Cancel that. Since my uncle wanted to be cremated there's only going to be a viewing -- no church service. After consulting with my grandmother, Dad decided that I shouldn't spend the $120 or so on gas coming and going for a few hours of stuff.

Granted, I didn't see my uncle very often and so we weren't close, but it feels odd to not go given that I'm still relatively close by. What should I do here? Something tells me a fruit basket would be somewhere between retarded and lame; probably a mix of both.

To Each His (Or Her) Own

June 03, 2008:

A friend is getting her portfolio page ready for an upcoming job hunt, and asked me to take a look at what she'd come up with. At the same time I pointed her to my newest mockup for comments.

Verdict: I think hers looks like a mac.com template; she thinks mine is a step down from the current look. That's especially harsh since the only two keys to this layout's longevity have been (a) that it's not as ugly as the v6 look, (b) I'm really frickin' lazy.

So I'm pretty sure that we're each just ignoring the other's remarks and plunging on ahead anyway. But if you have anything to say about v8 other than "it sucks" I'd still like to hear it.

TV Review: Battlestar Galactica 4-10 "Sine Qua Non"

June 02, 2008:

For the last few weeks I've been griping over e-mail about the slow, methodical pacing of the new BSG season. It just dawned on me that with minimal effort they could turn into something kind of like a review. So, spoilers for "Sine Qua Non", which aired 30 May 2008, are below...

Well, that was kinda disappointing. Last week I thought we were all set up for the big downhill run, then this week they realized they needed to drop a couple more pieces into place. And damn did it feel forced. Weird thing is, at the same time it felt like they were padding things out.

All of a sudden Lee's some Machiavellian power-monger? I know they pulled a Chekhov's Gun with it earlier in the episode, but seeing some hint of any ambition at all, besides pissing in Daddy's Wheaties every chance he gets, at any point prior to this would've been nice. Hell, my biggest knock against the guy was that he was aways handed jobs by his father despite not having any ambition at all, over the people who'd been trying to earn it.

Ditto for Adama demoting himself to pilot, though not as much. We already saw him go to great lengths when Starbuck was MIA back in season one (when she came back with her brain-dead raider) so seeing him do the same for Roslyn wasn't as much of a stretch. Interesting that he was willing to go do this himself though; but maybe with half of the fleet's air defense gone he felt he was more useful as a pilot than as a commander. Seeing him and Tigh play Rock 'em Sock 'em Geezers was pretty odd though. Nice touch having him reading the book at the end; he's likely going to be out there for a while.

And now Caprica's knocked up. Man, Sharon's gonna be pissed -- all this time she's been thinking Hera's special, and now there's not only a final-five Pop Tart running around but we've got a super-special original-seven-final-five mixer in the works as well. Maybe it's less "love" and more "whatever Galactica's got in its air supply". Or maybe Galactica just has Air Supply and the ladies like their background music on the cheesy side.

I'm glad they were able to bring Romo back (and since he'd be the first person Lee goes to for legal stuff that made sense once you get past the "line of succession only applies when we want it to" bit). I do kinda wish they'd gone with "eccentricity" rather than "around the bend," though. As it turned out it seems more like he was testing Lee's convictions instead of actually wanting to kill him, and he could've done that without the cat jerky he'd apparently been toting around for a few weeks. So was he already loopy and the cat died of natural causes, or did "they" go all Fatal Attraction on his ass for helping Baltar get acquitted? 'Cause maybe I'm slow but my first thought wasn't "you bastards!" but "y'know, an aircraft carrier probably isn't a very pet-friendly place..."

All the fanboys can rest; Jake did in fact make it off New Caprica. I kinda wish they'd been keeping up with the podcasts; Ron Moore mentioned that he was surprised by the outpouring of "where's Jake" after the escape so I'm sure he was amused at being able to work the dog back in.

There were things I liked about this episode: Adama's confrontation with Sharon was great, even if Grace Park seemed a little wooden to me -- Edward James Olmos is capable of carrying a scene like that on his own. According to the previews we're getting back to the basestar next week and we get to see D'Anna break a Cavil's neck. That alone should be worth the price of admission.

Hm. One thing from the show and one thing from the preview. Not exactly a good sign. Though in fairness I think this episode suffered more from not living up to my expectations than anything else. I think that if they hadn't spent so damn long on the setup (8 episodes now, since "Razor" is officially considered 4-01 and 4-02) that I would have been willing to buy into this ep a bit more.

But to sum up: Bleah. Maybe next week something can actually happen for 44 minutes instead of having 10 minutes being stretched out to an episode and having a random climax tacked onto it.

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