Daria to DVD in 2010!

This is even less coherent. I...didn't think that was possible.


Did she even say why she was resigning in there? I heard a lot of catchphrases. It's like one of those parodies of business executives, where they toss out words like "synergistic" and "revitalization" without connecting the themes to real English. Only, she's a real person, saying that. And she's saying it really enthusiastically, as if she totally knows what she's saying and doesn't realize she's saying it in gibberish.

Why won't he shut up already?

There is no good way to tell the public at large you've had an affair. But there are ways that are better than others. One of the worst ways to do it is to go into embarrassing detail about every liason ever and try to justify your bizarre behavior over the last one by saying that this affair was totally different than those other (!) affairs you've had before.

Is Mark Sanford committing public suicide slowly or what? He must believe that by trumping up how much he is in love with his current mistress makes his insanely stupid behavior make more sense. I get it--he thinks that the public will be more sympathetic if it looks not like he was a sex-crazed man in the midst of a of mid-life crisis but that he was so much in love that he couldn't help himself. Except that whether he was driven to disappear and leave no forwarding contact information because of his prick or his heart doesn't really matter when an entire state doesn't know where its governor is.

At this point, the details and defenses are just getting digustingly intimate. Really, dude. Stop already.

Why do I even bother offering opinions on music trivia when I'm so hopelessly wrong all the time? From now on, I'm going to preference everything I say with, "I'm probably making this up right now, but..."

To the folks I "corrected" about the song "Ebony and Ivory," I was wrong and am a moron and I will not be commenting on shit no more without the aforementioned disclaimer. I will cease pretending I know anything about music.



(Except that I was totally right when I said to moonlightalice that time that Trent Reznor wasn't fat, he'd just spent the last decade in a gym. Please note this as being the one time I was not, in fact, full of shit.)

Better than the usual offerings, even.

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Have a look at this chart of features offered across the new versions of Windows 7 (which, surprisingly, has yet to have a stupid name appended to it, like "Vista"). Apparently, Microsoft is going to push the Home Premium and Professional versions of Windows 7, but for those who really want to pay Photoshop-level prices for Windows, there are a bunch of more expensive options.

What I'm noticing here is that most people, myself included, would probably prefer the Home Basic, ( some thoughts on that )

Point is, this is too much. This was the problem with all seventy-billion versions of Vista. (You know, besides the fact that it was Vista.) Too many options leaves the average consumer in a position of assured annoyance. Either they buy the cheaper version and then worry about (or actually discover) the programs they're missing (and want) or they buy the more expensive version and resent the fact that they didn't end up needing any of the features that went into the higher price tag. Confusing people when it comes to computers is always a bad idea, especially as computers increasingly become repositories of sensitive information. People want to know that they've got something that works the way they want and protects what they've worked on. The more Microsoft splinters those levels of confidence into different products, the less secure the consumers feel. The less secure they feel about Microsoft, the more likely they are to flee.

I have a few questions about this ruling.

Let me start by saying that it is amazing, given the kinds of questions even the liberal SCOTUS justices were asking, that they ruled as they did. I'd also like to add, as many on progressive blogs have been doing, that I, too, was certain before I read the details of the ruling that Thomas would be the lone dissenter, proudly trumpeting the rights of school districts to strip-search tweeners at any moment for any reason. So, hurrah, SCOTUS actually managed to rally and say, no, you can't strip search a teenage girl because some other teenage girl felt like getting her in trouble and passed on a rumor that the first girl was packing heat Advil. (Thomas' dissent is giving me the creeps, so I'll leave it to you guys to read about it rather than going into it myself.)

But I still have a couple of questions:

1) The school officials have been granted immunity from, I assume, civil prosecution despite SCOTUS having found that the officials violated the girl's rights. Since Justice Thomas is so certain that every mixed signal = everyone breaking the law, won't this not deter schools from doing such searches in the future, despite their unconstitutionality, because they know they can't be sued?

2) The school district is not immune. Is it really the best way to stop this kind of adult-power-tripping madness to say that individuals can demand students be officially pantsed but that only the school can be sued for it? Honestly, wouldn't it better to say the school should be ashamed for not disciplining this person or that one but that the real problem was that person deciding to take the law into their own hands?

Basically, what I, the non-lawyer, get out of this is the following:
School teachers/administrators cannot strip search students...but there won't be any personal penalty if they do. The school district will be liable, however, meaning that the victims of these administrators will be in the oh-so-enviable position of suing a public school. So victims of this kind of unwarranted and now definitely unconstitutional assault will get to chose between letting the incident slide or bankrupting the center of education for their fellow students. Won't that be fun.

I watched the press conference with Governor Sanford yesterday. It was one of the worst attempts to defuse a situation as ever I saw. I understand that he's supposed to be "unconventional," and many of his constituents probably prize shooting from the hip over practiced, careful speechifying, but it was just embarrassing to watch.

It takes this article four paragraphs to get to the Gov's official declaration, which, believe me, is three times faster than Sanford managed. When one is caught in obvious shenanigans, the best thing to do is come forward and say, upfront, what's been going on. Instead, he meandered through all the plausible reasons why he might have disappeared for a week, apologized to friends, family, and voters, mentioned a reporter he'd had a run-in with at the Atlanta airport, and then copped to being out of the country on a booty call. He then went into embarrassing detail about how he'd met this person innocently at first, and how that had changed, and so on and so forth. Dude, you're here to tell people why you up and vanished without leaving your contact information, not trace your every thought process since your affair started. Great, you cheated on your wife; we do not need the play-by-play. (Unless it's going to lead to awkward questions like it did in Senator Ensign's case where he might have paid his mistress more, with GOP funds, while he was schtupping her and fired her when the affair was over.)

Of course, the real "news" here is that Sanford was a 2012 presidential hopeful and that looks like it won't be happening any more. I hope that such dashing of his chances happen for the right reason--for the fact that the executive leader of an entire state went AWOL and didn't think to make any provisions (like talking to the Lt. Gov!!!) to deal with state business while he was away. I don't give a shit who you boned unless your boning breaks the law (which, possibly, Ensign's firing of his mistress could have done--his paying her more while she had sex with him doesn't look great either). But you cannot just abandon your post as president. You want ass? Call up Hugh Hefner, go to Camp David, shag your weekend away, but for the love of the great noodly one, STAY IN TOUCH.

I forgot to mention that the doctor I saw yesterday said I'm a total freak. I mean, he didn't say that, but I have these in my face. I...always thought it was just my normal jaw? Apparently not. The doctor actually laughed at that a bit and told me not to worry about it. If I had this problem in my ear bones, then I'd have to worry. (Because bone growth in the ear = chipping bones out of your head surgery.)

Exostoses are genetic but also exaggerated by grinding or clenching your teeth. Well, that's me dead to rights, as I'm pretty sure I'm not the only family member with this issue and I frequently wake up with a sore jaw from clenching my teeth at night. (Dentist said I didn't grind, but I'm definitely clenching.)

I lack this thing you call sub...subtle...something about not blaring one's opinion, loudly and often. So this is a perfect meme for me because I will be unfailingly honest. My hand to the Great Noodly One's appendage.

Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.

Great White Shark am not serial killer; me am puppy!

I object to this salacious headline for three reasons. One, this isn't exactly news. You have some hundreds of millions of years in which sharks have evolved to be perfect predators. If they survived on randomly chomping at prey, they would never have made it this long. And speaking of evolution, the great white is superbly adapted for stalk-and-kill predation both because of its speed and force but also because of its coloring. The distinctive white belly and dark dorsal skin of the great white allows it to hide from prey at any depth--seals looking down from above will lose the shark's dark top side in the gloomy dark of the deeper ocean; seals looking up at sun-lit waters see the white belly. It's very easy to lose the great white shark, visually. I wrote a paper on this for my vertebrate zoology class, and I've swum with sharks--not great whites, alas--so trust me on this. But if you can't, rest assured none of this is news to anyone who is actually paid to study sharks. (Lucky bastards.)

Two, other animals do this all the time and don't get called Hannibal Lector for it. Tigers are probably the best example of great stalkers who are also notable for their particular camouflage. Tigers are deliberate and deadly hunters, and they are frequently demonized, but I don't remember anyone making direct connections between a tiger and Ted Bundy. (Maybe I haven't been reading the right material.)

And three, it's a mistake to personify animals. Period. I do it all the time with my kitties, but I am not in the profession of studying my cats and writing papers about their behaviors (contrary to what it might seem like from some of my LJ posts).

I really dislike this tendency of articles to make bold claims in headlines that they then subsequenty dismantle in the actual article. It's worse when they don't take apart such bullshit, but really, is it such a slow news day that we have to go "THINGS ARE DIFFERENT LIKE CRAZY ZOMG!" and then write an article that admits, "Actually, everything's fine, nothing to see here"?? This is just to drive up click-generated profits, isn't it?

It's been twenty years since Tim Burton's Batman was released.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of that movie, but that doesn't mean that the fact that it's two decades old now isn't a tad staggering. There was a time when Tim Burton wasn't really anybody. When rubber suits weren't as big of a joke as capes or spandex. That time has been over for two decades.

Wow.

Incedentally, I find the io9 meta about the sequels interesting for one reason: there are other people who, like me, infinitely prefer Batman Returns to Batman. feiran and I, in one of our many uncanny bonding moments, have declared that Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman was the A-#1 lesbian crush of our lives. At the time that movie came out, I was, what, ten? And I still thought she was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I got mocked pretty handily, but I went as Catwoman for Halloween in fifth grade. I remember thinking that the black shirt with puffy-paint faux stitches my mom made--to supplement the inferior store-bought costume pieces--was fanastic.

So, I'm biased. I loved that movie to pieces for Catwoman, and I admit that. But overall? Even without Catwoman, I'd still prefer to watch Batman Returns to Batman, I think. It's a lot more Burton-esque of the two Burton Batman movies, and I love his aesthetic even if I don't always love his movies. (Case in point: love these Alice in Wonderland pictures, but I'd love it better if we could just toss out the plot and the movie and pretend this was an intense photo shoot instead.) It's just nice to know that there are other nerds on the internet who agree with me. That doesn't happen often enough.


PS: LEGO Batman is ridiculously adorable. Each LEGO game tries to tweak the formula without really redoing anything major. While LEGO Indiana Jones faltered by trying to branch out from the one character really worth a darn in that franchise--that would be Indy, Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls notwithstanding--LEGO Batman soars because there are so many player characters worth playing with different skill sets that actually make sense. Well, sorta. I mean, it makes sense that Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, and the Joker are immune to toxic waste--Ivy's is a natural immunity that goes with her very poisonous nature, Freeze is safely tucked away in his suit, and the Joker survived a full-body dip in acid, so what could toxic waste really do to him any more? Killer Croc is pushing it though--he may be more resilient to damage in general, but toxic waste exposure isn't like being hit really hard. And It makes zero sense that Two-Face is similarly immune to that sort of exposure. I call shenanigans on that.

Otherwise, I'm in love! Especially the part where you get to play the three-story, five-level-per-story game both from Batman's side and the villains'. Also, Batman has different Bat-suits. Schumaker would be proud. (So would Adam West, surely.)

WIN: Buffy stakes Edward Cullen. Fuck yes.

I'd like to know, from those who are in the know about this: are these clips from Twilight...representative of the movie? Because there is no way in hell I would ever be able to sit and watch this without wanting to punch myself in the face until the physical misery overwhelms the spiritual one I would be suffering from that movie.

LOSE: $25 is not a good deal.

Even now, when I don't play the PS2, like, ever, it's still worth ten times as much as that. This is an insult! An insult!

WIN:

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I went home this weekend to leave my Dad his gift as a surprise. He and my mother were away at her dad's place in North Carolina for the weekend. I figured I'd slip in and out, and it would be a nice thing to come home to for my Dad, since I wasn't going to see him on Father's Day for the first time in, like, forever.

The plan fell apart when I was forced to admit my presence because there was a steady leak from some piping behind his bar and I called my mom to ask what she wanted to do about it. I did manage to close off the pipe that was leaking, but it had obviously been going for a while because there was a puddle in the basement (where the water had seeped the ceiling from above.) Happy Father's Day, Dad! You're going to need to call the plumber!

Oh well. I did leave him his gift with a rather adorable smiley-face mylar balloon right where he would see it upon coming into the house. Maybe that will cheer him up.

Happy Birthday to friend and roommate ecmyers!

In a few hours, you'll be winging your way to another writing retreat, but make sure to take some time in between all the fuss and hullabaloo of travel and the workaday write-a-thon to celebrate you. You deserve it! Leonard Nimoy's head in a jar concurs!

Happy Birthday ivy03! Another year well spent in your company has passed me all too quickly, but excellently! Given recent fannish turns, this icon is ever more enthusiastic in wishing you a pleasant, fun-filled (or relaxing, your choice, birthday girl) day. And may the future lead you to better, brighter, and shinier things!

Love!

I find myself increasingly interested in non-fiction these days. ( Why is that, I wonder? )

My latest find is Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us by Emily Yellin. It's neither brilliant nor stupid, just a workable sort of book on the subject of customer service. It's part primer on the evolution of customer service and part sociology textbook (minus the laborious vocabulary). There's a lot of psychology running around, not surprisingly, and it's neat to see all points of view on it--from the frustrated customers (hello!) to the people providing the service, to the people providing the tools for that service. The give-and-take of economics and psychology is neat.

And very relevant: AIG could do with a read of this book.

The woman in the picture, Mrs. Sosa, was on Countdown on Monday, and Keith Olbermann made the point that AIG is doing themselves a tremendous disservice by being dismissive of the claims of the passengers from the flight that landed in the Hudson. This is an opportunity for them to show that they were worth the nearly trillion or so dollars we loaned them, and they blew it. It comes back to the balance of opposites in Emily Yellin's book--the corporate profit margin versus is public appearance. Refusing to pay for therapy for children traumatized by surviving a plane crash is not a good PR move even when you're the most beloved company of all time, to say nothing of those companies, like AIG, that are high on the public shit list. It's a failure of customer service, and customers are getting to that point where they are madder than hell and ready to raise some to get better treatment.

I hope they win.

Redundancy is your friend in evolution of living organisms or technology. Just because we can wirelessly transmit files doesn't mean we don't want things like USB, SD, or even fire-wire ports.

If it's a laptop, I can understand sacrificing some of those connectivity things in the interests of saving on weight, but I'm talking about a bloody huge copier/printer/scanner. This thing isn't going anywhere. Nor are any documents you might want to scan onto the stupid thing because there's no connection to any internet and, because of aforementioned lack of physical connectors, no way to transport the documents away.

This thing stinks of being the ideal sort of printer/copier/scanner for a law firm, where they would, of course, have it connected to several hundred networked computers. I can't fathom why this department bought it if they had no intention of using it to its fullest capability. If they only wanted a heavy-duty copier, they could have saved their pennies and not gotten something with superfluous unaccessible features that taunt me--taunt me!--with possibilities I can only dream of some day seeing performed.

::kicks machine, kicks purchasing department harder::

Veronica Cartwright was not told about a significant plot point involving her character in two movies. You might have heard about the trick that Ridley Scott pulled on her (and the rest of the cast save John Hurt) in Alien. But did you know that she was also not informed about what would happen when she ran into Donald Sutherland in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? (Um, spoilers at that last link!)

Is that a salable talent or an insult to her abilities as an actress?

The remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) was decent. I enjoyed Kevin McCarthy's cameo, but it really made me wish that Donald Sutherland had had half of McCarthy's suave slyness at the outset. I guess they didn't want a lead actor who would compete with Leonard Nimoy for having the most soothing, slick voice. Nimoy, for reals, yo, that shit is distracting. I know people with British accents who can't schmooze so gentle. (Regarding that link: I will fight to the death over Virgina Madsen's superior Dune intro. I don't care which version of the movie you like better, but I will fuck your shit up if you don't get props to her Irulan versus Princess Whiny from the miniseries.)

I even really liked the change to the ending from either of the two the original had. The original original ending was awesome. (The studio-demanded reworking, with its reCOCKulous frame story, was less so.) So I consider it doubly impressive that they went the route they did and had it work. (Well done, Ms. Cartwright, I might add.)

I think I'm ready to move onto the less-well-received remakes of this classic. I sincerely doubt that Body Snatchers will be notable for much more than the fact that it stars that awesome IRA chick from Burn Notice, but what the hell? I'm going to watch The Invasion at some point (probably), so I might as well watch them all. While this logic has led me, in the past, to watch some truly tedious bullshit, I will point out that being thorough got me to see the Dolph Lundgren version of The Punisher which is possibly the most wonderful bit of schlock action ever, so there's that.

They're making a Dug short!

I was talking about this trend--started by The Incredibles? Monsters, Inc.?--whereby Pixar makes little animated shorts that take place in the realm of their movies (as opposed to the shorts they show before the movie which are independent of the film). I love these little movies way more than I should. My entire family can quote "Jack-Jack Attack" (and does, especially when sitting around in a game of Hearts).

Anywho, I was so keen on them having more with Dug, the really dim and adorable puppy from Up and now they will! Hurrah!