Peter and Laura and Jon gave me this hat at my 50th birthday dinner, organized by Luisa and attended by almost everybody I actually care about right now. But we’ll see. =;]
I said no presents, and since they actually expended colour printer resources on this, it does count as a present, but it’s so cool I’m not going to penalize them.
Peter had to point out what I didn’t notice, that it’s recursive.
So today, my 50th birthday (thank you, I don’t moisturize or shit, I just don’t go out in the sun a lot and I quit smoking 26 years ago…) and I’m watching CNN this morning. An item comes on about a kid in Louisiana named Justin Barker getting beaten nearly to death at some high school. There but for the grace of dog, thinks I. Then they talk to his parents. His father’s name is - get ready - David Barker.
Now I can ego-google my name and find all sorts of cool names, and a lotta not. So this really doesn’t mean anything. However, I was raised to believe in all sorts of religious hooey and supernatural/ESP/space alien crap, but while you can get the kid outa the bullshit, the kid has to work really hard to get the bullshit outa the kid.
It was just a weird jolt on my birthday to hear that man’s name in that context.
Now, with all due respect, time to party.
So I’m watching a White House press conference on CNN in which President Bush plans to announce his veto of the recent bill passed by Congress to fund stem cell research.
He outlines his moral and ethical reasons for his veto and then presents a victim of spina bifida who had her damaged bladder replaced by one grown from adult stem cells in the lab. (I have not independently verified this with my sources.)
Moments later, he refers to her condition (which he had to have been briefed on) as - and I kid you not - spina biffid-eye-da. Spina bifidida.
Why don’t his handlers drill him?
A few weeks ago when he was in Russia, he referred to a conversation he’d had with Putin and quoted himself: “Vladimir - I call him Vladimir…” which name he pronounced to rhyme approximately with polymer, as opposed to the more proper Anglophone pronunciation which should rhyme approximately with polymeer.
Can’t wait for tonight’s ‘Daily Show.’
Found art, that is. I love the angles and the colours and the textures in this dumb-luck Riverdale Park foot-bridge camera phone shot.
Well, Jericho has been disencancelled! This is a message from Nina Tassler, president of CBS.
She warns that once it returns for seven midseason episodes next year, viewership will have to be higher than before, and current fans will have to recruit new ones. I wouldn’t do that. Too shy.
To be honest, it almost lost me midseason when they were concentrating on the ordinary people of Jericho trying to adapt pre-war normal lives to the realities of the current situation. I admit I drifted. But the last few episodes got me back because they started getting contact from the outside world, as the various federal governments (at one point six claiming the title) tried to aid the recovery, and we found out more about who was responsible in flashbacks. That was when I appreciated the folksy, homey tone of the ‘personal lives’ episodes more. These were small farm-town Kansans, not ‘Red Dawn’ action hero teens, with God Scriptwriter on their side from the start.
Now if the fans would only send nuts (or, you know, muffins or cheese baskets) to the devils who cancelled Studio 60 and Veronica Mars.
On Tuesday I went over to Peter and Leslie’s to do a little Simon-minding, then stay for dinner and a movie. Well, Simon’s always fun and the movie was Guillermo del Toro’s ‘The Devil’s Backbone‘ (or more properly, because I can pronounce it like a pro,, ‘El Espinazo del diablo‘. As far as moody ghost stories go, it’s right up there with 1963’s ‘The Haunting‘ and one of my favourites, 1980’s ‘The Changeling‘.
I totally have to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth‘ (’El Laberinto del fauno‘) now. Who’s got it?
Then I was hanging out on Langley with PL&J. You might already know they have a Wii, which Jon’s highly cool grandfather got for them. If you haven’t seen or played it in person, holy guacamole, should you ever get PL&J to invite you over, and get Laura to make paella, which she didn’t for me this time (but she did last time accidentally), but it’s Spanish (Spanish Spanish ‘Castellano’; you pronounce two ells like they were ‘ly’: trust me) and so is Guillermo del Toro. (’ly’ again.)
I’ve got my own Mii (my Wii avatar) , which they created for me, and apparently, if you allow them to, they’ll wander across the web into other people’s Wii games! Is that not cool? Of course it is! And you can load your Miis (your Yoos?) onto the controller and take them to other Wii’s houses and upload them to those Wiis! Of course that’s cool!
So anyway, see ‘The Devil’s Backbone‘, get a Wii and let me know if you have ‘Pan’s Labyrinth‘.
