No Entry Today

    Yo, sports fans.
    I don’t think Mickey will be doing any typing today. I showed up for our weekly session and it looks like he’s out cold. It’s nothing to be alarmed about. I’ve seen it before. As his physical therapist, I would hazard the guess that he’s in a tryptophan coma, brought about my too much overindulging.
    It sounds dangerous, but it’s not really. It’s obviously due to too much turkey yesterday and the effects will wear off soon enough. I’m trying to increase bloodflow by stuffing spoonfuls of blueberry cheesecake into his mouth. Rest assured, if last year is any indication he should be rallying by late Saturday, with no ill-effects other than a stained shirtfront and a messy keyboard.
    Later.
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Food Glorious Food

    Happy Eating Day everybody. Today marks the start of that most wondrous of times, the Holiday Eating Season. Heavy rich foods, slathered in gravy. What could be better?
    Hopefully I’ll be able to partake of today’s feast…provided some stupid Canadians don’t keep me too long at work. [They’ve already had their Thanksgiving and they seem to take passive-aggressive Canadian delight in making us work on ours.]
    Update: good news. Dinner was a bit late so I made it well in time for the slicing and serving of the turkey. It was a smaller Thanksgiving dinner than normal, but, ironically, there were less leftovers than usual. Hopefully a traditional leftovers dinner can be thrown together, since the only thing better than Thanksgiving Dinner is the day after — since all the food is closer within reach.
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T2T Sneak Peek

    I’m surprised the usual LOTR sites haven’t reported this, but AOL has a short scene from The Two Towers available in RealVideo.


This raises the question, does anyone know how to get the URL for the file out of AOL? I know how to save a RealVideo file, but in this instance I don’t how to get to one.
    Speaking of The Two Towers, the official site has some very nice updates, including an exclusive and detailed look at the special effects as well as the recently unveiled and very cool theatrical poster.
    Update: never mind. An hour after posting this, I see The One Ring.net is mirroring the file in QuickTime format.
    Updated update: I guess it was a big day for sneak peeks. TORN has links to two other scenes from the movie.
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“A Day in the Life of My Mouth”

    Justin Quinell provides this fascinating and educational photo essay, titled “A Day in the Life of My Mouth”, featuring forty images from a small pinhole camera inside his mouth.
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Calling All English Majors

    During a recent trip to Stratford Ontario my dad became enamored with a quote, etched into a graveyard headstone. He managed to copy it but was unable to find the source. So, dear one or two readers, does the following verse look at all familiar to you?
Up in air you shall rise
Through crystal spheres and stars
Wisdom, Truth, and Soul’s Delight
Await you at the Seventh Gate
    At first I thought it was biblical, then it was suggested it might be from William Blake. Others have more recently said it might be by Edgar Lee Masters. A team of librarians was even more specific, saying the verse is from Masters’s poem “The Decision”, printed on April 14 1861.
    However, I can not find a copy of this poem anywhere online (nor in the anthologies at the local library); and I also discovered that Masters was born August 23 1868, which, one would assume, would make it difficult for him to write poetry seven years prior.
    So…   Anyone?   Anyone?
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E-mail of the Week

    From the makers of STAMINA®, now with secret ingredient “Horny Goat Weed”, comes the enjoyably-titled missive “Be her ‘Night in Shinning Armor’ again…”

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Rodney Dangerfield Time

    (Warning: this entry has way too many links.)
    Seriously. I don’t get no respect.
    Besides my own Short Fat Message Board and the insidious SEI board, my favorite hangout is over at the Strong Bad Message Bored over at Homestar Runner.com. It however is plagued by frequent “bonks” due to traffic overload. To insure our good times could continue unabated, I started up an “Everybody Loves Homestar Runner!” Homestar section on my message board, way back on July 23, so we could hang out there while the Strong Bad Message Bored recovered from its latest bonk. The Bored patrons did not seem very interested. They visited, looked the place over, and said they still preferred the original.
    Recently, Lymhoid (of the Sooper_Dooper_Flash page of Homestar secrets) opened up a message board, since the Bored was still suffering from severe bonks every couple days. Wow, what a great idea! Wish I‘d thought of it. To be blunt, his message board (as of now) is ugly, with black text on a navy blue background and lots of pop-up ads. And yet he’s lauded as a hero for providing this alternative.
    It just ain’t fair, I tells ya.
    But Foo! on them, since I’ve got another message board I’d rather go to anyway. So there.
Posted in Blog, Homestar, Links, Personal | 1 Comment

Look Who’s Back

    Ha ha! Osama’s jealous.
    George doesn’t write, he doesn’t call, and now it looks like he’s giving all his attentions to a guy named Saddam. So guess who comes out of the woodwork with another taped message. Osama’s back, just like a spurned ex leaving drunken phone messages. Experts have so far translated such phrases as “I miss all those things we used to do together” and “Baby, I thought we really had something.”
    Poor little pathetic sack.
    (I had intended to blow this up into a big routine, with the three of them showing up on some Springer-type show trying to work things out. But for the sake of the precious few remaining brain cells I have left, I avoid those types of programs and am therefore unable to write up a decent parody. Oh well.
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FOTR Redux

    I spent the evening watching the expanded Fellowship of the Ring. It’s going to take some time getting used to the new rhythms of the movie, but I really liked almost all the new scenes and scene extensions. The movie really does look better than the original two-disc set; the DTS soundtrack is similarly impressive. I’m half tempted to call in sick tomorrow just so I can spend all day poring over the supplemental material.
    All in all, an excellent birthday/Christmas present. Then again, how can it not be when my very own name is in the credits (and look who’s standing next to me!):

Click to see full screen

    Contributor JFathers adds: “If you call in sick, we’ll send ‘Vinnie’ over to make sure it’s permanent.”
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Being Old Sucks

    I don’t like this being old stuff. My windshield got covered in guano, no one would go with me to the bar on Friday, my Saturday birthday dinner gave me a stomach ache, a phone call this morning tells me the suit coat I special ordered is on backorder (despite the fact the salesman called up the warehouse Friday to confirm my style was in stock before I ordered), and I just remembered DVD Planet will be unable to send me The Fellowship of the Ring extended DVDs because there’s no mail today (hence my adding a day now to my Java countdown). Not to mention, the idiots continually calling up thinking my number is Detroit Edison’s because they’re too stupid to DIAL A 1 BEFORE THE AREA CODE!
    Being old sucks.
    When’s Matlock on?
Posted in Personal | 2 Comments