Thursday, September 29, 2005

You Can't Say That On TV!!

So after pondering on my friends "Bunny" blog, it struck me as to just how dumb censorship is. For example you can't say "Shit" on TV or radio without facing fines from the FCC in excess of Paraguay's annual budget. I won't get off on a rant about the legality of the FCC's inquisition on all things obscene, because I'm just in too good of a mood.

But seriously, words are what we use to express an idea, or to reference a thing. You can even have multiple words reference the same thing. And so we outlaw the usage of the word "fuck" on TV. But not the idea behind it. You can even reference it as long as you use a more kosher term. So why exactly is the word taboo, but not the idea?? Seems really well, bureaucratic and very much like what our government is good at.

I've noticed that sci-fi shows are rather adept at getting around this. "Hmmm... we can't say fuck, so instead we'll use... frak! Yeah that's it. They even sound the same, and everyone will know what we meant." And to which the censors say "... its not on the list. Approved!" And since it's all make-believe anyway, it's perfectly reasonable for their parallel-dimension type universe to have it's own unique words of curse. I've heard: frak, frell, dren, gorram, even swearing in chinese. And that's all A-Okay! I think it's just plain silly.

10 points if you can match the curse to the show!

Monday, September 26, 2005

To Be Continued...

Are there any 3 more dreaded words that might appear at the season finale of a favorite show? There are three shows I watch on the Sci-Fi channel, they have a winter & summer season, instead of starting in the fall and running through the spring. The last couple of season, or mid season breaks have had one or two of them end with To Be Continued... Which is kinda cool to give you something to look forward to, but then it's 3 months before you get to actually see it. Plus there's always that off chance that some asshole executive decides that reruns of some two-bit sitcom would be a better idea and cancel your show with no closure.

The end of this season came with all three shows being To Be Continued... They work you up to some huge climax and then leave you hanging. I mean, if you're going down on someone, you don't get them 90% of the way there, and then say "We'll finish this next fall". You're liable to get your head torn off. Violently.

Not only that but how often have you seen the bad guys win? The bomb explode? The death ray being fired? The good guy dying? Don't insult my intelligence by building up this huge scene where the good guys are captured and about to be hung and then cut to a To Be Continued... for 16 weeks. They're only going to be saved next season. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. So do me a favor, either give me some plotline closure, or freaking surprise me. Fire the death ray. Obliterate the city. Have a good guy get offed.

Because otherwise it's just an abuse of a plot technique. As far as I'm concerned it's tandemount to,

To Be Continued...

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

What.... is the Air-Speed Velocity of an Unladen Student Load?

I am not one to really believe in the whole reincarnation dogma. Yet, I have found either and instance of it, or sort of a modern day application of a particular personality disorder. Namely, those people who in ages past were mystics, sooth sayers, seers, crazy hermits living in the mountains in a cave on the tallest peak in the Land of Erg. These were the people one would go see to find the answers to life, the universe and everything. Generally these people would tell you that "To find the answer you seek you must climb to the top of the Mountain of Perpetual Torment, across the Plains of Doom, through the Forest of Eternity and beyond the Sea's of Antiquity."

These people, translated to the modern age, now work in the Financial Aid offices at universities around the world.

I got a student loan, so I wouldn't have to fork over tuition up front. The bank was okay with this, but after a month it still said that final approval was pending. So I call them up and ask why. It turns out that for 3 weeks they had been trying to get a hold of my school to make sure I was making sufficient academic progress. I thought, "hmmm, what could be the problem." So I called the financial aid office, and got a recording that told me in a big friendly voice that:

"There are no operators to take your call at the moment, please try back later."

No queue, no voice mail, it just hung up on me. No freaking wonder the bank couldn't get them on the phone. So I truck up there, taking time off from work, to stand in line to talk to the seer... er... financial aid person. They tell me they'll call and fix it. No problem.

2 weeks go by, and my fees still haven't been paid. I call the bank, bank says everything is okay. I go back up to school, they tell me everything is in order and to check back in a couple days.

Another week, and now it's the last day to pay for classes or they'll be DELETED and my fees STILL aren't paid. Amanda, my dear wife who apparently was a powerful sorceress in a past life... or would have been and it's just the modern day equivalent, however that is working, manages to divine the phone number to the financial aid office that gets you ACTUAL PEOPLE!! They tell her that "whoops! we forgot to tell the bank to send us the money, our bad." They put in a call get it all straightened out, except that the funds won't be there for 5 days. In that time my classes will be deleted, and I'll just go in and petition to get reinstated and then get to go back to class.

And no part of that, no itty bitty part of that, might in any way get screwed up leaving me totally and completely FUCKED??

The masters program I'm in is 5 straight semesters. You have to go 5 in a row or start over. So getting my classes deleted is a BIG FREAKING DEAL thank you very much. So the nice people say, "oh, well, we'll just put a special hold on your classes until next Wednesday."

Right, and no part of that, no itty bitty part of that, might in any way get screwed up leaving me totally and completely FUCKED?? Sorry, this isn't my first time to the dance , you'll have to do better than that. In the end it's all good, not dropped classes, and everything is accounted for.

But I do believe that I have found the modern age sooth sayers in financial aid (post office, and DMV also qualify) around the world.

Or... perhaps they're Vogons in disguise.


Thursday, September 15, 2005

Bring Out Your Dead

Today I was glancing through the headlines on cnn.com, and ran across this gem of a headline: Lab Mice Infected with Plague Missing. The gist of the article is that there are several mice that have the bubonic plague are gone. Missing from the lab. No one knows if they were stolen, eaten by other lab animals, or just lost in a shuffle of paperwork. They had the general opinion of "Yeah, we don't know where they are, they're sneaky little buggers. The mice will either turn up or not." Are you fucking kidding me?? This is the Black Death. You know, killed over half of Europe and you're being blase about it.

Didn't ANYBODY see 12 Monkeys? I'm sure that there was someone who saw a headline in that movie: "Top secret virus lab broken into, vials unaccounted for. Also in the news hundreds of people dead from misterious illness. More at 11." But then I read that 10 or 12 people turn up each year with it here in the US. That just blows my mind. I mean it's probably not THAT big of a deal what with modern medicine and all, but it's still kinda spooky.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Physics of Flashlights

About two years ago, I had grown tired of having to spend half an hour to find my flashlight. I was in Target, and passed by the section that had flashlights for sale. I picked up 4. 2 small ones for the house, and 2 big ones for our cars. Thus bring our total to 5 flashlights.

I then promptly lost the original one, then quickly lost the 2 house flashlights, brought the one in from my car and lost that one, leaving us with one flashlight. Again. And it usually takes about 20 minutes to find it as it may or may not be in our space-time.

So I have two working theories.

Theory A: The Pot O' Gold Theory.
This theory is based on the assumption that somewhere in our house is a secret compartment that useful objects can escape to, and once there cannot leave of their own accord. I expect to find several socks, 18 small foam soccer balls (cat toys), 2 wrenches, a hammer, Elvis and Atlantis.

Theory B: There Can Be Only One.
The other idea is that there can be only one flashlight, so they periodically meet in a parking garage with samurai swords and cut off each others heads.

I will now delete the inevitable post in this thread along the lines of "Great blog, keep it up, and hey, check out my site on laundry detergent!"

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Fight! Win! Drink! Get Naked!

So my friend called me up Friday and said he had obtained his companies season tickets to the Tech game for Saturday. He wanted to know if I wanted to go. Hmmmm, lemme think on that one.

Oh hell yeah.

These seats were his companies which means that they were in the club level, 10 rows from the field, stradling the 30 yard line. They're in the section where its like a minimum of $10,000 donation just to get in the drawing for season tickets. They had uniformed personel taking drink orders from the stands and going inside to get them for you. Fan fucking tastic!! So we got to watch the white and gold kick some as and actually not totally blow it in one of the WORST officiated games. Ever.

- As far as I know, and it could have changed, but holding is still a penalty. 10 yards. From the previous spot in college.
- A pass interference flag should probably be thrown, or NOT thrown, by the official that is standing 8 feet from the play. If you are on the sidelines on the opposite side of the field some 60 yards or so from the play, probably not your call.
- I understand wanting to limit hits out of bounds, but does incidental jersey contact 1 step out of bounds really constitute "Unnecessary roughness"? How about "Unnecessary flag throwing?"
- Why in the world do you run nothing but passing plays when you're up by two touchdowns in the last 6 minutes of the game?
- Like someone in the stands said, our band isn't much on the field, but they can really raise hell in the stands.
- Our fight song is about drinking and swearing. I think that's kinda cool.

Now, I've only been to campus a couple times since graduation, and only a handful of games. But in the 4 years since I graduated a few minor things have changed. My friend I was with left Tech after his freshman year to retain his sanity, so things have really changed for him. He was actually a bit angry I think, or maybe he felt cheated. Here are a few of the nifty things that have been done since I left.

- The old derelict Textile Engineering building that sat as a sort of ruinous monument to asbestos in the middle of campus has been torn down, and a park put in it's place.
- The bookstore has been moved, and the whole area has been revamped into a kind of high-tech lounge. The old nasty post office has been beautified and connected to the lounge. The post office even has HD-plasma TV's.
- The old baseball stadium which used to be just bleachers is now a nice brick structure.
- The health center is gone, and a brand new state of the art building is there.
- There is a whole group of buildings that are completely state of the art and brand new...I don't know what used to be there.
- While no longer applicable to me, the non-sororiety hotty factor has actually increased well past "Troll".
- The old freshman parking lot, that used to be ACROSS the highway, is now a hotel and conference center. To get to the old freshman lot you had to go under the highway (through a spooky tunnel), and turn left down They'll-Never-Hear-You-Scream Ave, and go back behind an Arby's, get asked for money about 17 times, then the lot is at the corner of Carjacking and Mugging. Now, you can get roomservice in the same spot.
- The burned out shell of a wearhouse across from the freshman lot is not the campus bookstore. It's actually a Barnes and Nobles, but highly customized for Tech. Textbooks are on the second story.
- The other burned out parking lot area is now a Marble Slab Creamery, a BBQ place, Asian Fusion Cuisine, A travel agency, and the small business incubator.
- The stadium now holds about 15,000 more people than it did when I was there.

So it's kinda like 2 different Techs. The Before-Rich-Graduated Tech and the Okay-He's-Gone-Quick-Lets-Expand-And-Update Tech.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Random Thoughts II

1) It is done. It is over. I have finally watched all 7 seasons of Buffy and all 5 seasons of Angel. Now I can go back and watch all the normal TV that got Tivo-ed in the mean time.

2) It just took me 30 minutes to log into my class lecture. Windows sucks. Windows-only applications are even worse.

3) We finally got bedroom furniture. Amanda said she was tired of living like we were in a dorm room. I guess the sectional wicker dressers aren't romantic. Good to know.

4) You know those Neighborhood Watch signs? The ones that are in subdivisions that say warning blah blah we'll actually call the cops blah blah? Everytime I see them all I can think is "Warning! The Eye of Ra is upon you!!" since they always have that eerie Egyptian hieroglyphic eye.

5) Which makes me think of some humorist somewhere who quoted the Pharaoh Khufu: "Spooky-Eye Bird Man-standing-sideways Spooky-Eye"

6) I had to look up "hieroglyphic" because I can't spell normal English words, let alone things like THAT.

7) Untie!!

8) It's rather sad that we had to occupy one of our OWN cities, as if it were Dresden, or Baghdad.

9) On that topic, with the news coverage of people with guns randomly shooting at rescuers. It was brought to mind that scene from the movie Independence Day when the news anchor showed a picture of a red circle with a line through it, and a gun in the middle saying something like "We ask that gang members not fire their weapons at the space craft as it might accidentally set off an interstellar war."

10) There's a gentle chill in the air in the mornings now, must mean its football season! My team took down Auburn this weekend taking the series to 2-0 since we started playing them again. Woot.

11) Monday night I found myself in a quandry. I should have been rooting for Miami to blow it, but that would have had me rooting for FSU, which I took a blood oath never to do. I think if it was FSU vs. The Hoardes of Hell, I'd be damned.

12) You can push-start a manual transmission.

13) There was WAA-AA-AAY to much beer this weekend.

14) A cat's defense mechanism when it gets scared is to expell copious amounts of hair. I guess to annoy it's predators by making them go "pthat pthat pthat".

15) What's in a name? Does a name dictate behavior, or does the behavior lend description to the name? Cuz naming a cat after the Norse god of Fire, Mischief and, uh, Evil, might have been a severe oversight in judgement.

16) I'm am ALWAYS finding myself typing behaviour and colour. Guess I was born on the wrong side of the pond.

17) My friends 2.5 year old was in Meltdown-Mode this weekend. Nothing quite as ugly as watching a small child freaking loose it's mind for no reasons what so ever. At one point he was strapped in his car seat and went berzerk trying to hit his older brother. The whole car seat was moving. Imagine the muppet Animal just with more devestation. Like Godzilla.

18) Fin