quis custodiet ipsos nerds?

i went to see "watchmen" the other day. i thought it was pretty good overall. here's a great piece of bathroom graffiti i found at a borders in san diego:

(it's tough to read, but one person wrote "who watches the watchmen?" and some wiseacre drew an arrow pointing to the quote and wrote "nerds")

i loved the novel and the movie is a pretty faithful interpretation, but it definitely has its low points. i hate ham-handed symbolism (i.e. "argh! the comedian was right! life IS just a joke!") and the movie had more than its share of that. plus, malin akerman and matthew goode certainly aren't going to win any oscars for their roles, but i don't think they're as bad as some people say.

despite my generally positive impressions, i left the theater with the feeling that i would have been confused had i not read the book. but mostly because people in the theater kept talking/laughing/making noise and i couldn't hear. we went to a matinee at a mildly crappy theater and the crowd wasn't exactly respectful.

the movie's high ratio of male-to-female nudity provoked quite a bit of snickering amongst the audience. i can understand a brief chuckle at seeing dr. manhattan in all his luminous blue glory for the first time, or at nite owl's relative flabbiness for a superhero... but it's pathetic when adults are still giggling at a completely nonsexual image of a naked person after seeing it for the sixth or seventh time.

i think my worst "inappropriate laughing at a theater" experience was "the fellowship of the ring." i'm a big LoTR fan (shocking, right?) and i had been following the production of that movie for like three years.

i saw it on opening night in a packed theater and i was spellbound, up until the scene where boromir gets shot by a bunch of arrows. a group of people somewhere in the back of the theater started laughing uproariously and i have no idea why... looking at it objectively, there isn't anything funny about the scene; no goofy facial expressions or weird groans or anything.

i was livid at them ruining that scene for me. to this day, i still have nagging memories of those boorish assholes whenever i watch it.

warp speed, mr. data!

man, i'm downloading something right now at 600 kb/s. if you would have told me i'd someday be doing that back when i was downloading starcraft maps on a 56k modem, i'd have thought you were a crazy person.

travelogues: san diego, #1 -- tales from the whale's vagina

as i said yesterday, i recently went on a vacation to san diego. it was my first time on a plane. and, come to think of it, my first time inside an airport.

jackie and i woke up around 4:30 a.m. on a sunday and left for o'hare right away. as it happened, it was the first day of daylight savings time, so it was actually 3:30. that's usually about when i'm going to bed on saturday night/sunday mornings, so i was pretty disoriented.

o'hare is huge and labyrinthine and complicated. it's kind of amazing that people can design and operate something on such a large scale and make it work within reasonably acceptable margins. especially when you consider people also do things like this.

i've heard so many horror stories about aiport security that i was braced for the worst, but it was surprisingly painless. the whole thing took maybe 15 minutes, likely due to the ungodly hour at which we were passing through.

the real horror was the airport starbucks, where a medium chai tea and a blueberry scone somehow cost $9.

we walked around for a while before boarding. i browsed an airport shop and found precisely zero items i wanted to read on the plane (other than "twilight" *swoon*). also, i never realized pornos are actually sold at airports. i always thought that was just a joke and it seems really unfunny and sad now that i know it's true.

i'd be lying if i said i wasn't a little nervous while the plane maneuvered toward the runway before taking off. but i found the tremendous speed of taking off and the weird feeling when the front of the plane lifted from the ground to be kind of exhilarating.

it was extremely cloudy when we took off and all i could see was just heavy, opaque whiteness. it felt oddly claustrophobic considering that in reality there was nothing there except open sky. i really liked looking out the window once things cleared up... it gives you an interesting sense of perspective and scope when you can see how things are laid out.

even so, flying was a weird experience. you're inside a relatively fragile aluminum tube 35,000 feet above the ground traveling at 600 miles per hour. the idea that some minor thing could go wrong and send me plummeting to a fiery and inescapable death was often in the back of my mind... but it's difficult to feel nervous when small children are calmly coloring right behind you, so i was ok.

that being said, the scariest part of the flight by far was when an older man sitting in the aisle seat reached over to shake jackie's hand and introduce himself as "don."

"what the hell is he doing?" i thought. "is it normal for people to introduce themselves on planes?"

i then noticed don was wearing a baseball cap that said "JESUS is my boss." my eyes moved down to his bright green t-shirt, which was stretched tight across his huge pot belly and had a bastardized sprite logo that said something about the holy spirit. one would think copyright infringement is a sin, but whatever.

"oh no... oh fuck..." i thought, as don turned his attention toward me. "is he going to try to talk to us? is he going to proseltyze to me for the entire four hour flight?! i'll throw myself out the hatch."

my listless handshake and frigid greeting must have broadcast that i didn't want conversation. i immediately shrank away, put on my ipod and buried my face in my book.

fortunately, don seemed unperturbed and occupied himself with the in-flight presentation of the keanu reeves version of "the day the earth stood still" and an entire box of cheez-its. i didn't hear from him for the rest of the flight, but he apparently kept stealing jackie's arm rest.

bizarre e-mails, #3

ok... i know i just said i was going to do work today, but i received this gem a bit ago and couldn't resist:


that's it. no greeting, no signature, no context whatsoever. and i know it's a bit hard to read, but the e-mail address does say "bigmeatbabe."

i don't have even the slightest clue about what this person is asking considering i've never had anything whatsoever to do with awarding any type of scholarship... with the possible exception of periodically doling out my "star of the masquerade" awards.

but i can take a guess about one aspect of applying for scholarships: using an e-mail address that contains the phrase "bigmeatbabe" probably does not help one's chances.

i'm back, baby!

hey dudes, sorry i haven't updated much. i've had a pretty crazy (in the good way) week and a half or so, and i have some fun pictures from my trip to san diego. but right now i have tons of catching up to do at work, so enjoy this in the meantime:

i'll give you a blister in the sun, wayne coyne...

wayne coyne has been spouting off this insane nonsense about arcade fire. apparently, he wants me to strongly consider punching him in the face.

the power of the five-headed dragon god burns within this post

man, i have a ton of stuff i want to write about. i now have a new phone that can actually take pictures, so i have a bunch of uplifting photos to broaden your horizons and embiggen your souls... like this weird brand of christian bread i found at the grocery store and this awesome mystical five-headed dragon god incense burner where the fucking smoke comes out of his gaping, fanged mouths.

i think i kind of sidestepped "teaser" and went straight to "spoiler" with that one, but oh well.

BUT! my blogging hands are presently rather loosely tied because i still don't have the internet at home (thanks to a certain pink-haired idiot with whom i live) and i don't really like doing this at work.

plus i leave for vacation on sunday. it will be a trip of many firsts for me... my first time on the west coast, my first actual vacation as an adult, and (i know this is odd for someone my age) my first time on a plane.

i'm actually kind of disappointed about finally going on a plane. that was always my surefire statement when playing "never have i ever" that would force 99 percent of people to drink. ah well...

in other news, battlestar galactica is still amazing. if season 3's big crazy-ass conclusion hadn't been prematurely spoiled for me, i think i would have had to be hospitalized for shock. as it was, i was still totally blown away.

just like columbus, i get the bloodlust

nate showed this to me the other night and i think it's hilarious and awesome:

smart public transportation moments, #1

this one surprised me.. i was on the brown line and some guy was amusing his friends by asking geography questions. the only one i can remember was "which country is largest: equatorial new guinea, chile or puerto rico?"

who wants to guess?!

**edit:

ok, i should have said "equatorial guinea." i heard this on a fucking train like two weeks ago, cut me some slack. and as for puerto rico being a commonwealth rather than a country, let's just classify them as "geographical areas" for the sake of the post.

incommunicado

hey dudes, i won't be able to update for a little bit. our cable and internet are going to be off for a little while... a situation that threatens to tax my natural good humor and docile disposition to the very brink of rudeness.

i've already been lax with the blogging because i've been desperately trying to catch up on battlestar galactica so i can watch the series finale on TV with everyone else. i think i watched like six episodes in a row on sunday, all of which blew me away. i never watch tv dramas, so i'm always totally shocked by the plot twists... i keep thinking terrible things that happen are going to turn out to be dreams or something and all the characters will be fine at the end of the episode.

here's a quick story:

saturday night, i went out with my friend molly. our friend was at kit kat lounge for her birthday party and we wanted to go hang out with her. we headed there, paid $10 for two miller lites and didn't see our friend.

i immediately noticed i was the ugliest man there, which was fine. kit kat lounge is a fancy boystown bar full of fancy people, and i'm not about to compete with those accustomed to luxuries such as drink menus and bathroom stalls with doors.

molly disagreed and said i was only the worst-dressed man there, not the ugliest. i'm not sure if that was supposed to make me feel better or worse. but molly also didn't realize there were like 40 drag queens there, so what does she know?

so anyway molly wanted to meet up with her sister and her sister's friend for a quick drink, so they came to pick us up in a cab. i got in the front seat when they arrived and had to twist around and stick my hand through the little cab driver window to make introductions.

my grip in this awkward position must not have been bone-crushing enough for the visibly drunk friend, as she immediately slurred that i had a "lil' faggot handshake." i think she must have been skipped the seminar on first impressions at finishing school.

i responded by saying i couldn't really shake hands because of my avian bone syndrome and no one laughed.