This is all SCIENCE

Bill Nye teaches FOX "news" about science.

That's just awesome.

My Happy Dream World

In my happy Dream World:

* The sky is TARDIS blue. Daleks shoot rainbows. Literally. They shoot the damn rainbows.

* George R.R. Martin is surgically fused to a desk and fed through a complex cybernetic life-support mechanism that will keep his arms and brain alive until the Song of Ice and Fire is complete.

* We have personal flying jetpacks that do not burn your arse off when you fly.

* We have lightsabers with idiot controls to keep us from cutting off important body parts. We have stem-cell grown clone parts for the unimportant parts.

* Anyone can get married. People can't reproduce until they pass some basic tests proving they can competently raise a child and are not passing along stoopid in their genes.

* Governments spend more time taking care of the public interests and less time giving money to big business and wealthy jackasses.

* We have big space stations and thriving orbital clean-up industries to take care of frozen astronaut pee.

* Pluto is a planet.

* Mars is a tourist destination.

* People who defraud the public of millions or billions of dollars are given life in prison without parole. People who smoke pot are fine as long as they don't do it while flying around on their jetpacks.

* Uranus is a penal colony. Yes. I said that.

* "Firefly" is on its tenth season and going strong.

* Talk Like Kirk day is a national holiday.

* Talk Like a Pirate Day is bigger than Xmas.

* Pastafarianism is the world's biggest religion.

* Someone has created flying monkeys.

Four Words:

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Jon Stewart for President.

Sneezes

I appear to be demonstrating symptoms of an allergy to my office.

That or it's just an unusual bought of extreme sneezing. Maybe I can qualify for the Sneezing Olympics?

Oy.

OH HELL YES!

That's right. I'm excited about a sequel to a kid's animated tv show.

Don't judge.

Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom!

A buddy of mine gave me a few CDs of electronica/dance music.

I'm not a dancer and I hate clubs, but I strangely like the music. It's kind of hypnotic and it's great when I need to muscle through a project of some kind.

This morning's playlist is a bunch of that. I keep expecting the much-hated fluorescent lights overhead to dim and a sparkly dance ball to do its thing.

Maybe it's not all that helpful to productivity after all...

Debt Sealing

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Jon Stewart truly calls it.

Personally, I think we should abolish the debt ceiling (it's meaningless and arbitrary anyway) then fire everyone in government: Congress first and foremost, then the President, then the Supreme Court and make 'em all re-apply for their jobs.

At this rate they're all demonstrating epic incompetence.

I did see President Obama's speech yesterday about the debt ceiling fiasco and I must say he really did sum things up nicely. He's a great speaker and a charismatic president. If he spent a little less time bending over for the Right (which he's pretty much been doing since day one of his presidency), I'd be less-annoyed with him.

Packed with all the good stuff

Busy weekend.

Friday: saw Captain America at the Kabuki in San Francisco. If you're unfamiliar with the Kabuki, they have theaters that prohibit rugrats and serve alcohol.

So after a dinner of sushi and sake, I watched the Star Spangled Avenger do his Nazi-smashing with two 22 ounce Arrogant Bastard Ales in my system.

I think I liked the movie, but between the booze and the 3D glasses, I have a problem processing details.

Saturday: Erik's birthday celebration.

BBQ place. Beer there. 'nuff said.

Sunday: A trek to see friends and their very active not-quite-two-year-old. A lesson in microclimates, as their home was a good ten degrees hotter than my place. Oy.

Series Six Point Two

SPOILERS

For those who are overly-sensitive to promos of the rest of series six of "Dr. Who"...
(*cough*V*cough*)
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A Question of Containment

I find I am often thirsty at work. The office ventilation, in addition to being filled with dust, mold, and crap, is fairly dry.

I also like my water cold.

My freebie water bottle, while a lovely shade of green, does little to keep said water cold as it has all the insulation properties of... um... something that doesn't insulate well.

Yeah okay. Moving on.

Last December, I discovered the Funranium Labs Steins of Science. I raved about them in prior posts. Kind of incessantly, actually.

So I have more than one. I'd obtained a follow-up stein (a "rugged" stein, which is somewhat less-vulnerable to accidental breakage) with the intent of taking it with me when I go outside of my man-cave/hovel/apartment.

Long story short: my rugged stein now observes a place of honor on the chaos that is my desk at work.

It's delightful to have water that remains cold. I'm still adapting to the expanded lip of the rugged stein, but given how often I spill water on myself, it's not really a problem.

The only real problem is that I've trained myself to drink beer out of steins. So whenever I glance over at my shiny stein, I crave a pint of something fermented.

My office, thus far, has not seen fit to provide us with kegs of good beer (or any beer, for that matter).

I sigh.

Musings

I've given it a few moments of thought and decided that I simply cannot generate even a smidge of interest in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

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Sometimes the camera does not lie.

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CROVEL!

I love saying this word.

I am, however, unconvinced it will do jack bit of good in a zombie apocalypse.

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Grotesque awesome

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You know what sucks? Pulling a muscle in your back. What sucks worse? Pulling a muscle in your back doing something mundane (and a little stupid).

No wait. I have this wrong. Getting old sucks.

Jesus H Christ in a chicken basket

FULL WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK WITHOUT HEADPHONES!

Pure awesome.

(credit to V for pimping this)

Primal Scream

I finished "A Dance with Dragons" last night.

The latest George R.R. Martin book is now waiting to get passed along to the next person in my "book loaning" queue.

I, in the meantime, am thinking decidedly unfond thoughts of Mr. Martin and applying a variety of vile epithets as to his character and heritage.

It was a great book. Don't get me wrong.

I could say why I am reacting this way, but I'm loathe to give spoilers.

So instead I blog, whine, and generally behave in a childish manner.

And swear. Oh, do I swear...

Thank the gods

... for Jon Stewart.

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Cool

Okay, these watches? Cool idea.

(via OhGizmo)

The July 20 Penny Arcade? So. Very. True.

Seeing this... I'm just waiting to see ads for the inevitable sex toy. I can see it now, really: Skynet Sex Toys! For Terminating any inability to achieve satisfaction!

It's probably good I never went into marketing, really.

What. The. Hell?

I caught a few minutes of Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" segment this morning.

They were playing the British version of "The Office".

Okay, so what the hell is going on?

First SyFy decides that airing science fiction (the premise of the original network) is just too much trouble, so they start with so-called "reality TV" shows involving wannabe Ghostbusters and then move on to wrestling (fiction, I'll grant you, but little science) and cooking show.

Cooking. Shows.

Why the hell they don't just change their name to "grab bag of shite" network is beyond me, but moving on.

So Cartoon Network.

Did I miss a memo? The last few times I've turned on their Adult Swim segment, they haven't had any animation at all. It's been a series of live programs. Something involving a children's hospital. Something that looked like an attempt at 70's homage comedy on acid. Then... "The Office"? Really?

Mind you, the British version of "The Office" is easily the best thing I've seen on that network in years, but really? How is that remotely related to animation or cartoons?

When did the people running these two networks lose their minds and the concept of target audiences?

And jesus... the animation Adult Swim does air... "Squidbillies"? Really? REALLY?

I crap better animation than that.

It's just insulting.

The Dream of the Nineties

Facepalm

Republicans.

I call them "repugnicans" mainly because I find their stances to be repugnant and ridiculous.

The latest is the take of trying to ban mosques while pushing prayer prophylactics instead of actually trying to solve problems.

And don't get me started on the Teabagger effort to sabotage our economy with this debt ceiling nonsense.

Worried about natural disasters, Repugs? I have a few thoughts:

1) Stop supporting meaningless wars elsewhere in the world (this applies to you too, Dumbocrats).

2) Tax the wealthy proportionately. They can afford it more than the poor and the middle class. This applies to corporations as well. Trickle-down economics doesn't work and never has.

3) Stop trying to sabotage our government every time a Dumbocrat gets into the White House. You assholes were all over Clinton for eight years. He fixed up the shambles of an economy from years of Reagan and Bush 1.0. He left office with a budget surplus for god's sake. Bush 2.0 wasn't even done with his first term when he squandered that and you faux-fiscal conservative jackasses just cheered him on.

The Dumbocrats may be spineless, but they at least try to play ball. Repugnicans are so insanely-partisan that they're just poison.

Okay, off the soapbox. This isn't really constructive. It's just whiny.

Where to find a bucket of eels...?

While I quite like Google+ (so far), I can completely understand Warren Ellis' take on it.

Google could stand to fine-tune it a bit.

It's going to be hard to go toe-to-toe with Facebook. In my case it helps that Facebook opted to introduce their annoying chat feature and it's constantly popping up and annoying the hell out of me, thus making me look favorably upon the relatively-inoffensive Google+.

In the long run, social networking is always going to be annoying. That's just a fact of the Internet. I'm slowly growing more and more disenchanted with it as a whole, but can't quite wean myself off it.

Yeah...

I'm only about sixty pages into A Dance with Dragons and... goddamn.

It was a long, long wait but having read a scene with Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targarean, and Jon Snow in succession just makes me happy beyond words.

It's like meeting up with old friends after a long time away.

And now Bran Stark. Oh happy day!

I would have gotten further on Dragons save that I felt a need to re-read SVK again to absorb more Warren Ellis-ness.

The awesome threatens to overwhelm.

And now it's Friday. I have a whole weekend to read, slack, read, and generally do my own thing.

Life doesn't suck.

Dance of Dragony-Joy

IT IS MINE!!!!

A Day in the Life...

A day in the life of a modern San Franciscan (forwarded by a friend)

I have not been this amused in a long, long time.

For the record, I am not a San Franciscan, but right now I wish I was.

Gettin' mah Kafka on

When Warren Ellis announced his SVK project, I was intrigued.

At one point, I ordered a copy. I mean, let's face it. Ellis is one of those writers who could have characters reading the damn phone book and I'd probably still be interested in the offering.

It arrived yesterday.

Goddamn.

So I get this cardboard envelope containing a plastic envelope that has a plastic-bagged and cardboard-backed, gorgeous comic book and a small "object" (UV flashlight, or as our British neighbors like to call it, a "torch") that resembles an Eon Extreme flashlight.

It was the disclaimer on the "object" that initially sold me on this. The disclaimer lists a fascinating copyright warning and an instruction to hold fast while the armed security of Heimdall Security Solutions comes to deal with the situation.

The comic is gorgeous. The paper is high quality and the art is awesome. The story is surreal and paranoid, so it's right up my alley.

I haven't enjoyed a comic book this much in a long, long time.

If I may pause to adorn my scalp with my pimp hat: SVK is sold out, but can be ordered, if you are so-inclined.

It's all Greek to me

I caught the premiere of SyFy's new series "Alphas". It was essentially X-Men lite.

Not bad. Interesting characters, though the actors were sort of blah. I've seen worse on TV.

I could enjoy this one.

Oh My God! It's Full of Muppets!

Found this on rpg.net. It's watermarked and clearly belongs to a genius who is unquestionably mad and worthy of investigation (amymebberson.tumblr.com).

A quick glance through this site's "junk drawer" reveals some amazing talent.

I'm not sure anything is going to top combining "Dr. Who" with Muppets.

Having Animal as Colin Baker's Doctor? Pure win. PURE. WIN.

Appliances

My microwave stopped working on Saturday as I prepared popcorn for the game I hosted.

It was a hand-me-down beast from my 'rents. It was such a POS that the readout has not worked in about ten years. It was hot to the touch when it stopped working, so it's quite possible I've been irradiated.

Good thing I don't plan to have kids. I probably can't now.

On the flipside, I either have cancer or super-powers. Or both.

So anyway... I went out yesterday and bought a new microwave oven for the first time in my life.

It's so nice to have working appliances. I should consider getting a new toaster oven before I accidentally blow up my kitchen.

I swear it's a wonder I haven't maimed or killed myself cooking yet.

When Fantasy and Reality Blur

I run a role-playing game as one of my hobbies.

It's something I've done since I was a kid. It's become a part of my routine with a core group of my closer friends. It's sort of our version of "poker night" only instead of cards, chips, and cigars it's dice, paper, and soda.

Much the same bullshit comes up. Random conversations about whatever. The latest football game is rarely a topic. The latest action/sci-fi/fantasy movie/tv-series is often a topic.

There's often trash-talking. There's ribald humor. There's terrible, terrible puns.

It's a bonding thing. We all have our avenues for such. Some folks have poker night. Some have knitting groups. Some jam in a garage band. Some console game. We table-top game.

It's been a part of my life for... well more than half of my entire life.

And sometimes it gets weirdly-personal.

Table-top role-playing games involve creating characters. Essentially a role-playing game is just a narrated story in which individual players create a story character and decide what that character does, often in reaction to the story's narrator (the game master) or other players.

Players get attached to their characters. This is, to me, a good thing. A character is a reflection of a person's psyche. A character is a piece of the imagination with a smattering of the soul. It's a little piece of wish-fulfillment.

We're attached to our wishes, after all

As a result, sometimes conflicts come up in this. Conflicts of style, wishes, and personality types.

My current group is going through a bit of that. Real life is dealing some raw cards to more than a few of my friends and they're all reacting differently to real life by how they play in the game.

And now I've got two of these players in some kind of feud. It's like watching a pair of kids squabble. I feel like a babysitter who can't seem to find a way to make them behave and has no real way to make them take a time out.

It's starting to spin in bizarre ways. I can't tell if it's as serious as some of the rhetoric I get in emails would imply. It's certainly a problem.

It's like herding cats sometimes. I wonder what madness drives me to keep this insane hobby.

I wonder why I don't drink more.

Fascinating Question

Saw this on Twitch.

If you could instantaneously learn one additional language, what would it be?

I've often wished I could just magically pick up another language or six. I certainly wish I'd paid more attention to foreign language classes in school.

I've got my personal preferences narrowed down to a list of three top contenders:

1) Japanese
2) Canonese Chinese
3) Mandarin Chinese

Japanese - on the face of it - is certainly not the most practical choice. That said, I own a lot of Japanese movies and watch a lot of Japanese entertainment. It would certainly be nice to know what folks are saying. And I have several Japanese friends. Would be nice to be able to converse in the language.

That argument actually works just as well for Cantonese. There's a lot of Cantonese speakers in the Bay Area and a fair number of my friends speak it. Most of my Hong Kong martial arts flicks are in Cantonese as well. In terms of a wider scope of use, I could get a lot more milage out of Cantonese as it's spoken in communities along the Pacific Rim and most especially in Hong Kong.

That leaves Mandarin. It's the "official" language of China and is spoken pretty much everywhere in the mainland. China's a growing power, so it would pay to be able to speak the "official" language.

All three languages make use of the same essential character-set. The Japanese refer to Chinese ideograms as "kanji". While the pronounciations differ, the meanings are essentially the same. Mandarin and Cantonese use those sets as well, though there's the added complications of "traditional" vs "simplified".

*sigh*

Or I could just suck it up, take some classes, and actually try to learn.

But where's the fun in that?

The Good, the Bad, and the Painful

Apparently the serial comma is no longer acceptable. As a professional writer, I find this annoying.

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I finally appear to have mastered a throw in my martial arts class. I was rather ecstatic, especially after the dismal failure of trying to do air falls.

If you have no idea what an air fall is, you should count yourself lucky. Done poorly, they are not comfortable.

Still, being able semi-gracefully make someone else do an air fall is a wonderful feeling.

It was perfect timing, too. I was just starting to feel really discouraged by my lack of progress in this class over the last year.

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Woke with a resurgance of plantar fasciitis. The usual stretching exercises have not helped a great deal. Bicycling to work didn't make it worse, at least.

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Today's game of "count the hookers" came up with a big, fat zero. Nada. Zip.

It's getting foggy and a bit on the cool side. Maybe business is slow on these days.

Honestly, I don't really want to know.

Aaaah! Almost forgot!

Yesterday's bike ride into the office found me resuming my "count the hookers" game.

Yesterday's count: one.

She looked chilly. Small wonder, really.

Lessons

Lessons learned from my recent journey:

1) Charge your iPod before getting on the airplane.

2) It's not worth it to purchase alcohol on an airplane.

3) French toast made with Portuguese Sweet Bread and macadamia nuts is easily one of the most delicious breakfasts ever. Especially with a side of crispy bacon, some fresh-squeezed orange juice, and an uninterrupted view of Waikiki Beach.

4) People in Honolulu like to jog on stone and concrete. Lord knows why.

5) Driving ginormous luxury cars can be fun.

6) Pigeons in Honolulu are the most aggressive birds I've ever seen.

Back in the Saddle

After a week in partially-cloudy, warm-yet-breezy, Honolulu, I'm back in California just in time for the heat wave.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

It's warmer in the Bay Area than it was in Honolulu. Freakin' weird.

Honolulu remains as I remember it, for the most part. The strange calls of the local birds soothed me as I sought shade from the burning dayball and admired from afar the various gorgeous women in very skimpy attire.

It's the only place I've ever been (outside of Japan) where locals speak Japanese. And for good reason.

It retains many bars that I quite enjoyed. I found the mai tais in the Moana Hotel to be flawed and sub-standard while the mai tais at the Mai Tai Bar in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel retain their excellence. I also got to try mai tais at La Mariana (near the airport) and they had quite the tasty offering.

I also tried a "Trader Vic's Mai Tai" (bottled) on the flight home. That was easily the most disgusting drink I've had in recent memory.

It's good to be home.