2nd Amendment or not

When a mother holds a gun to her son's head, that's when we should understand to the point of certainty that people don't need to have guns. Frankly, the only logical reason I've ever heard given for having one is hunting for those who enjoy it and for them rifles are sufficient, with the rifles stored in a club facility near or at the hunting grounds. The current push in Congress to give gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits is beyond absurd. The NRA can kiss my First Amendment-protected ass if they think different but I sure wish they'd cut out the idiotic arguments proclaiming that every gun is a good gun.

Chapel of Love

Going to the chapel
And we're gonna get married
Going to the chapel
And we're gonna get married

Gee I really love you
And we're gonna get married
Going to the chapel of love

Spring is here
The sky is blue
Sky is blue) Birds all sing
Oh the birds all sing
Like they do
Today's the day
We'll say "I do"
And we'll never be lonely anymore

Because we're
Going to the chapel
And we're gonna get married
Going to the chapel
And we're gonna get married

Gee I really love you
And we're gonna get married
Going to the chapel of love

Bells will ring
Bells will ring
The sun will shine
I'll be hers
And she'll be mine
We'll love until
The end of time
And we'll never be lonely anymore

Because we're
Going to the chapel
And we're gonna get married
Going goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get married
-- The Dixie Cups

Today's novel: Double Whammy

Carl Hiaasen published Double Whammy back in 1987. Still extremely readable, it's one of those broken down private eye tales where, of course, the private eye solves the mystery but not after extreme jeopardy, the bad guys pay in strange and painful ways, and the protagonist goes home still sad and broken down. I've got another Hiaasen paperback towards the top of the stack and I'll give more of a write up after that's read.

Enjoyable

Today's movie: Erik the Viking

The Monty Pythons had much cinematic success sending up Jesus, King Arthur, so after they split up I'm not surprised that some of the members would continue the trend. Terry Jones wrote and directed 1989's Erik the Viking, which features Tim Robbins as a Viking who would challenge the (Norse) gods on their own turf by finding his way to Valhalla.

The big rehearsal dinner starts soon so not too much detail here but... This film doesn't really succeed, there's too much drifting away towards the straightahead and away from comedy, or else bits that just don't work well enough. John Cleese is Robbins' main opponent but he's barely present in the end, the woman Robbins supposedly loves enough to challenge Valhalla is barely introduced to him before he (accidentally) kills her, and in the end there are no meaningful obstacles preventing Robbins and crew from fulfilling their mission. Like most of the Python films, this is generally a series of connected sketches and not enough of them are hilarious enough to make for a satisfying whole. Though I did quite like Robbins' performance and Imogen Stubbs as Princess Aud. Gary Cady, as Keitel Blacksmith, is someone I would have expected to see a lot more of than he's turned out in the years since.

Mildly recommended, mainly for Pythonistas.

The most lucrative league game in history

English Premier League, that is. A single match, last of the season, on Sunday will determine whether my beloved Liverpool FC or the brummy bog bandits of Chelsea will finish fourth and thereby clinch the final English spot in next season's Champions League. LFC must win outright to end up alright while Chelsea takes it with only a draw. And this is hugely meaningful because the financial difference between the CL place and the consolation prize of UEFA Cup is £20m-plus! That's more than $32 million American. History may be against us, not having when at Stamford Bridge in 13 years, but I predict the Reds will make me a wedding present and win.

Thursday morning rambling

1) IBM details Blue Gene supercomputer - 130,000 CPUs linked in a single machine to operate at one quadrillion operations per second. Holy shit!

2) I updated the George Carlin page since Carlin himself has disavowed authorship of the joke list. Oh well.

3) ROE v. Paid: For Tech CEOs, Money Is No Object - Not surprisingly, an analysis by The Street.com shows there is no correlation between return on equity (ROE) and CEO pay. Just shocking that CEOs keep getting more even when they aren't earning it.

4) Trouble in Bush's America, by Bob Herbert on the NYT OpeEd page, just magnifies that CEOs and their ultra-wealthy cronies are satisfied with this so-called jobless recovery even if it leaves many of us looking the toilet straight in the eye.

Ever wanted to know where those teams play?

English Premier League: Annotated Map... Of course, with the season ending and the practice of relegation and promotion this is nearly outdated already.

Ode to The Sweet One

That kiss, that smile, that explosion that
Brilliance cutting through a grey dreary
Afternoon that I thought would never end until
You came unexpectedly to the door and rang.
No television, no novel, no violence-stained
Videogame.

Those lips, those eyelashes, the cheekbones that
Sit at the top of your body and never fail to raise my
Temperature, to quicken the pace of the blood flow
In my veins.

Do you understand this passion? Have I told you
Often enough how much I love you and what that
Means to me?

[Speaking of getting married...]

A Mighty Wind's a'Comin'!

Four days. 97 measly hours. 5833 minutes. Hmm, that last sounds more comfortable, I think. Anyway, that's the amount of time until the big day. Until the wedding ceremony for me and Vivian. Today's excitement about wrapped up the preparations. I drove over to her office at lunchtime and we made our way to the Santa Clara County Clerk/Recorder's Office to get our marriage license. The woman behind the counter, besides filling out forms and such, actually made us raise our right hands and take an oath! ROFL! I also picked up my snazzy new suit and dropped the source CDs off at a buddy's place (I'll keep his name away from the RIAA snoops). Excitement builds!

Blogger's lunch with Scoble

Today was my last chance to get Scobelized in person before the man moves himself and his wife up to the rainy range of Redmond, so we met up for lunch. Robert is really intelligent and a good conversationalist, not just a wanking blogger, so this is always fun and I'm sad he's leaving the Valley. Although the move is a great opportunity for him and a great hire for Microsoft. The talk ranged from bad CEOs who hang on too long and Warren Buffett's recent CEO pay rant to the relative housing markets here and there to how tough it is to find a job these days. Good luck Rob and don't forget us Valley bloggers!

Sidenote: The Buffett link was via MetaFilter, which is having quite the little discussion over the reality of 2nd Richest Man's remarks.

Scientific strangeness: An Orchid by Any Other Name: An Asparagus?

Those bastards!

Had a big shock on the Atkins front the other day when I went to the store for our monthly restocking of muffin mix and bars. The idiots in charge at Atkins Nutritionals (the company that makes the food products) changed the formulation of the muffin mix and now it has more than twice as many carbs as before. Considering TS1 and I eat them every morning as a key part of our breakfast, this is really maddening.

I subscribe to the email newsletter, I get the bi-monthly paper catalog, I visit the website on occasion, and in none of those places was any change announced in advance. If we'd have known, we could have gone in ahead of the change and bought a big supply since once we reach phase three the extra carbs will not be a problem. But no! the management morons decided this was a big secret which customers couldn't be let in on.

You don't suppose the fact that the new packaging also raises the price substantially had anything to do with their decision, do you? Right, the old packages had enough mix to make, by their calculations, 18 muffins and GNC charged $5.99 per box while the new ones make only a dozen and GNC charges $5.49 per box.

I called up their customer service line to get an explanation and maybe see if they had any in the warehouse I could buy. No, the mental midgets sold out their stock of the old formulation before shipping the new stuff, so even that possibility is gone. What were these people thinking? Damn, really does suck!

Dawn and the telco idiots: Must. Control. Fist. of Death.

Last night's movie: A Mighty Wind

Talk about irony! We go to see a film about folk singers and then after, in search of some evening java, end up at a coffeeshop where a folksinger is playing. Funny or what?

Which fits in perfectly with A Mighty Wind, the latest film from Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, and gang. Guest was also responsible for (co-wrote and directed) recent intelligent humor outings Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman; he first came to attention with a year on Saturday Night Live back in the '80s but really as bassist Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap (compare that Tufnel pic to this still from Wind).

This movie tells the story of a memorial tribute concert for Irving Steinbloom, recently deceased and the number one impresario of the folk music scene of the late 1950s and '60s, and the three groups that come together for it. In two weeks with Public Broadcasting televising it live, no less. The Spinal Tap trio (Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean) make up The Folksmen, who for unstated reasons haven't seen each other in 30 years. Catherine O'Hara and Levy are Mitch and Mickey, who also haven't seen each other in 30 years either but because Mitch went insane. The last group is The New Main Street Singers, a nine piece ensemble though none of the nine are actually original members or even close to old enough to have been one.

The script, by Guest and Levy, had plenty of jokes in it, which is hardly surprising but Wind also has a lot more subtlesituational humor. Some instances: Shearer's bald head and under the chin beard; the former porn actress turned New Main Street singer (the terrific Jane Lynch, who played the lesbian lover in Best in Show) and her utterly fantastic cosmological explanation; Ed Begley Jr.'s public broadcasting honcho, a native of Sweden who peppers his speech with Yiddish; Fred Willard's character, who is completely oblivious to reality yet able to operate successfully for decades in the entertainment business when in any other industry he'd be lucky to have a job packing up return shipments.

There is quite a bit of folk music throughout the 90 minute movie, which is a problem for some people, but even with this the filmmakers have gone to the trouble of writing songs that fit the period perfectly while effectively parodying the originals. The movie title is also the name of the closing song, performed together by three groups, but also a, well, jocular reference to a big fart. Plot, as usual for this group, is mostly ignored in favor of sketches but there is progress towards the concert as well as hiccups along the way and I think that any more plot would have just gotten in the way.

Definitely recommended

42: Not the real answer

Last year today I looked back at the day of my birth. I can confirm that my parents are still not Martians, either fo them, but that they are still wonderful people and I have dificulty imagining a better pair, plus a great sister who is also non-Martian. What I didn't have a year ago was a wedding coming up in six days. Oh yeah, TS1 is almost in the trap from which she will never escape! Although this could be the five cups of coffee talking, as I've had an extreme yen for the stuff today. For those of you who don't understand this entry's title, here.

Coolness coming: Imagining a Better Kitchen