Bloom County
Question; What was the bestest and funniest comic stip of all time?
Answer: Bloom County and you can catch a view of Opus here if you have never seen it (Berkley Breathed picked out his favorite ones)
Travel much?
Over the next month, I will be flying to New Zealand, England, Scotland, France, then back to the United States. Upon completion of the flights, I will have flown entirely around the planet.
The flight from Sydney to London alone is something like 22 hours in the air. If only I had an electrical outlet and an internet connection, that would not only suck far less, but I would probably be caught up on, bills, taxes, work, emails, and play a really mean game of Warcraft. Not that I would be any better at having a win over Ray just once.
Diver down
After two weekends of diving and testing, I am now a PADI certified, card carrying, licensed open water diver! Unfortunately, I will be getting over the salt water intake and being nauseated from the turbulent boat ride yesterday for a short time so I don't plan on going right back in the underwater world for a short while. The weather picked up yesterday and tossed the boat around a bit, a few people tossed their cookies, I remained vigil but didn't feel well for the rest of the day. I met some great people in the course and the marine life was fascinating; manta rays, puffer fish, sea horses, grey nurse sharks, etc...
Today is Australia Day and everyone is off work. A nice relaxing day to recover. Ahhh.
Happy birthday Australia
Celebrity couples
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, I can't believe I have found another celebrity couple I am tired of hearing about more than Benifer, but then Benifer is no more (or so they would have us believe). Oh wait, there's still Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. Bleach. When she was filming St. Elmo's Fire, he was like, what, an embryo?
If these people don’t start breaking up soon, I may have to intervene.
The Last Samurai
Almost everyone I know rolled their eyes at the trailer for this movie. Tom Cruise has taken flack for being too, well, Tom Cruise I guess. I actually liked this movie a lot.
A good use of color and symbolism with a great story and great action. Tom Cruise was believeable and so were the other actors. If not for Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, this movie might have made the top of the list for 2003 and I am still trying to decide if my love of the LOR movie was influenced by the hype and other people's opinions.
Yes, the story was a bit reused (Dances with Wolves) but what in Hollywood isn't anymore? I liked the message of the film and the way it was told.
iLife
iLife can bite my digital ass. I walked across the city of Sydney today to find the Apple store just to be told that they sold the last one. To add insult to injury, all the sales people were having a blast playing with Garage Band on the demo macs.
I got home tonight to order a copy on the Apple store and my account won't let me change the shipping address to outside the United States.
I guess I should feel lucky though, I can at least buy music from the iTunes music store. People from Australia can't even do that yet.
Get it together Apple.
Dolphin research
Okay, I'm not a marine biologist and even though I have a lot of useless knowledge, I am lost to the following news:
"Dolphins in Mexico are beaching themselves in great numbers, many of them had died before rescue came"
So, taking from what I do know about Dolphins, that they are mammals that breathe air and not water, why are they dying on the beaches? My guess is one of the following;
a. from exposure to the sun after length of time?
b. starvation?
c. losing the will to live after discovering they can't go get a drink with an umbrella at a Mexican resort?
If anyone is willing to do the research I am too lazy to look into, please share the knowledge.
Update - Jon answered this problem in the notepad Thank God for friends with useless knowledge in different circles than my own.
Bubble Wrap
Not as fun as the real thing, but it will do in a pinch.
Under the Sea
Tommorow morning it's rise and shine and scuba classes all day long for the next two weekends. After nearly blowing the deadline to confirm, I can tell you that cramming three chapters of "How to scuba" is a bit of a dry read the night before class starts. Not to mention two project deadlines looming over me. Sigh.
I think the doctor thought I was stoned during my physical this evening; he kept saying I had a "glassy eyed" look about me.
feelin' fine, doc.
Bring 'em on.
There has been a lot of buzz around the video edits submitted to moveon.org. One of my favorites that got passed over for the final cut was what are we teaching our children by Fred Surr, Ted Page, and Janet Tashjian.
The Year in Cities 2003
Oklahoma City*
Colorado Springs, CO
Ft. Collins, CO
Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
Los Angeles, CA*
Grand Canyon, AZ
Dallas, TX
Sydney, Australia*
Perth, Australia
Margaret River, Australia
Pemberton, Australia
woolamaloo Ranch, Australia
Melbourne, Australia
Philip Island, Australia
Crested Butte, CO
The Blue Mountains, Australia
Canberra, Australia
Hunter Valley, Australia
Paramatta, Australia
Love Actually
A really good movie. It's a bit sappy in parts yea, but as far as sappy movies go, it was enjoyable and pretty funny. I loved the parts with Liam Neeson's character and his son. I did cringe a little bit at the idea of Billy Bob Thorton playing the U.S. President. A look at most forms of love; giving, selfish, lost, forbidden, simple, innocent, friendship, etc. The soundtrack is pretty good as well.
You know, meaning of life kind of stuff.
Some nights I can’t get to sleep because I think about things that leave many more questions, like human behavior, galactic formations, and why I sometimes hear voices that tells me to burn things…
The Pyramids are built that way because if you wanted to build a structure that massive back then, you didn’t have the aid of modern architecture to teach you about weight distribution to make flat ceilings. Flying buttresses didn't even come about till the middle ages, hence, you get four walls all coming together at a point at the top. Which is a bit more logical than "Aliens showed them how.”
The universe is, without a doubt, expanding. Black holes, without a doubt, exist and never go away once they are formed. Stars are constantly being born and many eventually die and become voids in space called Balck Holes. Therefore, at some point, those little puppy's will consume everything in existence, then each other and…. Bang! Do we start again from the beginning? Does everything just end?
People want acceptance and will conform to get a comfortable amount of it. Politicians aim to appeal to the basic wants of the masses even though masses of people don’t usually think with logic and rational.
If you think about the meaning of life stuff too much, you will end up going insane, which is why most people just don’t bother without the aid of religions to explain in the missing parts.
Sid and Marty Krofft should be tried in a world court for crimes against humanity.
And finally, the voices tell me to burn things because they all must pay.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
A great ending to the trillogy. The Lord of the Rings movies have set a new standard in modern story telling and use of digital animation.
