I just caught Jeff Goldblum's bit on yesterday's Colbert Report.  Apparently he's got some bad karma because he's being exiled to some Law & Order show.  But after watching his bit, I just have to say:

Will somebody please, please hire that man to star as Carl Sagan in a biopic?  Pretty please?

Yeah, it made me cry.

And cry.

And I even had to stifle some sobs. But I loved the movie. I'm a soft touch.

Afterwards Sturdy Helpmeet™ and I wondered why we so rarely cry at ordinary (non-animated) movies these days.  Probably we're

( Squirrel! )

Earlier in the week I ordered a bunch of new parts from my favorite e-tailer, the better to construct a new [insert low cackle] machine.  Said parts were shipped in two boxes and are due to arrive today.  Box the second -- box the lesser, box junior, box-sho -- arrived this morning. 

The friendly UPS driver scratched his head and muttered: "Hmm, my list says there should be a second box" -- box the greater, box senior, box-dai -- "but it's not in my van.  It must have been loaded on the wrong truck.  Or maybe it's hiding back at the warehouse."

Waiting, as one sometimes does, for one's...parts...is hard enough.  But to be delayed, perhaps denied, at the very moment of acquisition?

Howl, I say.  Howl.

UPDATE:  At the last minute UPS redeemed itself by delivering my stuff.  Props to UPS!

Mr. Crowbar, we won't be needing you today.

Awwwww hell yeah!

Video Game - E3 2009 - Video Game Trailers

Sweet.  I love it when I find truth in advertising.

Seriously, Jonathan Coulton's DVD is absolutely delightful.  I'm grinnin' so hard I feel like I've been huffing paint.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth.

Back when I was angsting about turning forty, jrosehale suggested I follow the examples of Stephen Fry and his fellow royal subjects by writing a letter to myself as a 16 year old.  At first I was a bit afraid -- even petrified:  after all, Stephen Fry is a demigod of letters, theater, film, television, and the Internet while I'm just another Texas boy with a pot belly and a Chinese laptop. 

I'd hate to show the poor fellow up.

I wrote two paragraphs on my birthday but quickly realized that it wasn't working.  Besides, the hot new Star Trek and a cold beer were calling my name.

But now that I've had a bit of time to reflect, I'll try again.  So here I am, forty years and 11 days old, writing to my teenaged self.  Don't tell Stephen (he's so sensitive, you know).

( A civilized society would shoot me for this kind of self-indulgence... )

A Dreamwidth account, actually.  FSM knows what I'm going to do with it, though....

(Thanks to dangerousfred!)

Because when Sturdy Helpmeet™ outdoes herself, she really outdoes herself.

Huge props to my Sturdy Helpmeet™, who managed to get me a birthday card from Mr. Superfabulous himself, the insanely cool George Hrab, Jame's Randi's personal troubadour. Apparently it involved asking nicely. Who knew?

Click the little picture to see the whole thing.

Thank you, Darling.  (And you too, Geo.)

I didn't say it was going to be pretty.



I took the day off & caught a matinee of the new Star Trek movie.  It's a lot of fun, but it's very busy.  Think of an origin-story movie that has to account for seven key characters, one of them twice, plus a bad guy, and keep up a modern-day action-movie pace, while pretending to know enough about science to be science fiction.  It's like X-Men on speed.  But definitely a lot of fun.

Here's what's not so fun:  being solicited at home on your day off work.  I'd blame it on the bad economy, but I swear the people knocking on my door are the same ones that bothered me whenever whenever I've taken a sick day over the last five or six years. It's like they're waiting...lurking....

But that's OK, 'cause I've got a sweet damn hat.

Thing the first:  I'm turning 40 in just under two weeks.  I'm strangely torn between two urges.  Should I retreat into a hole and hope it goes away, or should I get drunk, put on a pair of plastic novelty Viking horns, and run up and down the street naked and screaming?  (Thanks to Mom  & Dad for a great pre-birthday dinner last week.)

Thing the second:  tomorrow I will have been caffeine-free for two weeks.

Thing the third: The Hunt for Gollum -- a fan-film prequel to The Fellowship of the Ring, done in a Peter Jackson style -- turns out to be pretty good.  Thanks to jrosehale for reminding me it exists.

Thing the fourth: I really like my new laptop.  I've never owned a laptop before, and it's very cool.  I was so, so tempted to get a Mac...but I want to build a new desktop rig for gaming, too, and my deep-discount Lenovo Ideapad does just what I need it to do for a hell of a lot less money, money that will put some substantially more kick-ass gear into the desktop.

I was a bit afraid of Vista -- popular opinion being so negative and this being my first experience with it -- but as I've gotten on board after the second service pack, I guess the worst (or at least most visible) bugs have been ironed out by now.  I'm pleased to see that 64-bit Vista runs everything I've thrown at it so far without any trouble at all, including the software for my guitar effects board.  I have only two annoyances at this point:  the hard drive runs a lot, probably something to do with indexing or Norton or "superfetch" or whatever it is that Windows thinks it should do to try to anticipate what I'm going to do next; and the OS nags the user a bit too much for confirmation when installing applications or adjusting settings.  The nagging itself is not so bad, though -- in practice it's not much different from being prompted occasionally for a superuser password in UNIX or Linux -- it's just that Windows appears to have several different ways of displaying the what is apparently the same request for confirmation, which creates more confusion than necessary.

They smell like ... geekery.

Greta Christina on why it's wrong not to prosecute the war crimes of the Bush administration.

She says what I find myself unable to say, because whenever I try I start to scream.

There are a lot of century plants in my neighborhood. A few years and at least one site-design ago, when Gord visited my Sturdy Helpmeet™ and me, he took a picture of one and posted it on his blog with the phrase (if I remember correctly): "They may already be among us."

Well, Gord, they are among us -- and they're breeding.

Biggish pics follow the cuts.

( Century plant in bloom )

( Century plant in bloom 2 )

One of my favorite little songs.

( Then... )

( ...and now..... )

Ganked from danamongden .  What is the first word (or phrase) that comes to mind when you see the words:

1. Animal ::
2. Temporary ::
3. Moan ::
4. Rapid ::
5. That’s for me to say ::
6. City ::
7. Bumper ::
8. Eclipse ::
9. Problematic ::
10. If? ::

( My answers.... )

Sturdy Helpmeet™ and I have registered for The Amazing Meeting 7. Cue evil cackle...now.

This goes out to my Sturdy Helpmeet™ and weaselherder and cageyklio and everyone else who finds many critters to be more peoplish than most humans.

( Redbone Hound, by Idgy Vaughn )

HAVING TAKEN THE MATTER UNDER ADVISEMENT WITH MANAGEMENT, THE PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED CENSORED HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH THE FOLLOWING SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE STATEMENT.

LET'S ALL GET TOGETHER AND REALLY REALLY PET SOME REALLY NICE BUNNIES IN A WAY THAT IS NOT ALLEGORICAL IN ANY SENSE FOR ANYTHING ILLEGAL, UNWHOLESOME, OR FATTENING.

THANK YOU

Right now I'm reading a book called Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes.  I suspect I'll be tempted to write more about it later once I'm done.  It's long essay about death, the fear of death, and how three generations of his family -- plus a wide variety of artists and thinkers ancient and modern -- dealt with death from a philosophical and generally non-religious, or at least non-Christian, point of view.  The following story caught my eye and it forced me to re-watch the ending of Battlestar Galactica, ( Spoilers! )