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Sunday, July 30
Culmination
We haven't spoken in awhile and I don't think she reads this, but I did want to congratulate an acquaintance on her long-term project (she was the photographer on a 15-month-long observation for this story, which was presented in a 5-part series in the World-Herald last week). I remember her being very enthusiastic about the project last time I talked to her, so I can imagine the conclusion has been an emotional one.
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Saturday, July 29
Some Things Are Just Wrong
Country music, any movie starring WWF actors and messing with my childhood pillars.
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Thursday, July 27
Reloaded
I haven't actually seen these on tv (probably because I don't really watch tv), but I assume they're out there. They're mildly amusing, if possibly mean-spirited (they get their point across, but at the expense of sounding arrogant). Today I ran into this altered screenshot, which is far funnier than the ads themselves. The accompanying joke involved the PC having to reboot and reload after the gun freezes up while the Mac walks off to his car full of chicks (with a bemused Linux watching on - I'm actually curious to see how Linux would be rendered in these ads).
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Wednesday, July 26
Dating 101
So I haven't figured out all the right things to do on a first date, but I'm pretty sure I can recognize some of the wrong things to do . . .
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Tuesday, July 25
How the Other 2% Lives
Thanks to a kind offer, I attended the "Street of Dreams" event for the first time this year. If you've ever wanted to see what the inside of a $750,000 house looks like, you should go. If your stomach turns at blatant overconsumption, this may not be the event for you. I mean, come on, one of the houses had a play room for the kids that was bigger than my last apartment . . . I actually felt a pang of sadness for the people who think these are the greatest things in the world; for all the indoor hot tubs and multiple fireplaces and two-story garages and showers that could hold 6 people, there was a palpable lack of "substance," as though it was all a very expensive layer of 24k gold leaf over a cardboard box. For all the money spent, the people who buy these houses are not, if the studies are to be believed, any happier than those in lower tax brackets; they just use up more resources, have a longer commute and spend more time focusing on what they have to buy to "keep up." I think I'll stick with my old, light-on-the-modern-conveniences, heavy-on-the-character house, thanks. Sure, if I suddenly had a million dollars I can think of a lot of things on my house that could use upgrading (wiring, windows, the entire second floor, etc.), but I can also think of a lot of charities that need money a lot more than I need two kitchens and a sauna.
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Monday, July 24
Wow, I So Want My Money Back
At least it was a rental and not full theater price, but still . . . "Doom" sucked. It was like a non-scary, non-suspenseful, 13-year-old cousin of "Resident Evil."
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Sunday, July 23
Radio Waves
I will admit to leaning toward liking Christina Aguilera when her first big song broke while I was in college. The subsequent spiral into meaningless Britney-pop and aggressive lyrics (famously parodied by Sarah Michelle Gellar on SNL) turned me off, but I do like her new song (not enough to buy it, but enough to not change the radio station). I think because of the 1940s "big band" brass accompaniment. That's something you just don't hear on Top 40 radio these days.
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Saturday, July 22
Electricity, You Are Such a Cruel Mistress
My power went out while I was getting ready for work today (luckily as I was preparing to go out the door and not earlier). I didn't mind the lights going out so much (it was almost noon, after all). I didn't mind that I had to figure out how to manually open my garage door for the first time since I bought my house. And I was only moderately annoyed that I had to power down my computer (although it justified the battery backup I purchased a year ago; it's kind of odd to be sitting in a completely quiet, powerless house still chatting on the computer, in an almost surreal way). What I *did* mind, though, was that said power outage bitch-slapped my VCR into forgetting to record my Stargate episodes. Grrr. I thought momentarily I might have forgotten to pay my bill, but I drove through five sets of completely dead (not flashing red or yellow - completely dead) stoplights before hitting a working one and one of my radio stations was out, so apparently it was a grid problem. I was a little annoyed at the clueless people who assumed that "dead stoplight" = "no stoplight" (when in reality it becomes a four-way stop), and by "clueless" I mean "everyone on the road around me." I guess I was the only person who knew that rule. It's remarkable there weren't any accidents.
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Friday, July 21
Encouragement, Redneck-Style
I saw a license plate a few days ago that read " GITR DUN." I was minorly disturbed.
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Wednesday, July 19
Documentation
One of the perks of my new job is being asked to tag along when the powers that be tour the renovations of the Omaha Building (because I have a nice camera). Yesterday that meant I was allowed onto the roof of the building for the first time ever (it's pretty strictly off limits). I took a considerable number of pictures for the firm (something like 160 total which I whittled down to about 45 after eliminating duplicates and out-of-focus shots); I picked out the seven or so that I thought the general public would like (they are, currently, the last seven or so of this set).
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Sunday, July 16
Cinematic Scintillation
Brief reviews of my recent movie excursions. Possible spoilers. Beware. "The Lake House" was decent but utterly forgettable. The concept was cute, but the actual mechanics of the time travel hook (the element that allows for and moves the plot) was vague and the characters didn't react to it realistically (and its origin was never explained). The "surprise twist" was spotted miles off and the actual ending was anticlimactic. See it if you're a fan of the actors. Despite its hype and massive ticket sales, I wasn't that impressed with the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean." It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly memorable. The swordfight atop the waterwheel was fantastic, but the subplot with the love triangles was awful. It was fun to see, but not something I'll buy. I was excited to see "A Scanner Darkly." And now that I've seen it . . . wow. Not "wow" as in "it was fantastic" but "wow" as in "what a trip." It's difficult to even describe. The animation (which was painted with a computer over live film) was trippy; I had to look away from the screen in a couple of scenes when the focus was on a character wearing a "shift suit" (which constantly shifted the wearer from one physical appearance to another). The plot itself was complex (I heard two guys talking on the way out who were completely confused; I considered stopping to explain it to them, but decided not to), but ultimately I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters, so while the ending was profound it wasn't really touching. On the upside, the theaters are air conditioned, which is nice when it's 100 bloody degrees out. It kind of makes up for the quality of the movies.
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Friday, July 14
Where No Man Has Gone Before
One of my coworkers is a big William Shatner fan. Which means I have to tease him now and then: Me: You know how they launched Gene Roddenberry and Scotty into space? Him: Yeah, with that space burial thing. Me: I think any network would have incredible ratings if they did that with Shatner and covered it live. Him: Probably. He's a pretty popular guy. Me: Especially if they did it before he died. Him: . . . Me: He could have a little capsule with a ShatnerCam(tm) that would broadcast live until he ran out of air. He could do podcasts as he rocketed out and became the first living person to go past the orbit of the moon. "It . . . is very cold. I am . . . alone with my thoughts . . . here . . . in the blackness of space." Him: . . . Me: And then after he dies we can have live ShatnerCam(tm) of his desiccated and frozen corpse for the next thousand years. It'd be like a burglar-proof tomb. I'm telling you, ratings hit.
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Event Horizon Bliss
The new seasons of Stargate and Atlantis start tonight. Yay! I hear they even have more crossovers this season.
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Thursday, July 13
Black Clouds on the Horizon
I don't think I've ever seen the street lights all come on at 3:30 in the afternoon before. Freaky damn storm anyway. At least it cooled things off. For now. It's supposed to be in the 100s this weekend. Maybe I'll go visit Tim in Phoenix where it's cooler . . .
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Wednesday, July 12
Brains Trump Breasts
This amused me, for reasons that should be fairly obvious to those who know me.
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Tuesday, July 11
We All Share an Ancestor . . . But He Loved Me Best
This is a nifty article. It turns out that we all share an ancestor within the last 5,000 years and possibly as recently as 2,000 years ago, due to the mathematics involved in having billions of ancestors (two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc., backward exponentially). The article delves into the grandiose by saying said person was " the ancestor of every person now living on Earth" (emphasis mine). I think it more accurate to say said person was an ancestor, one of many. And the idea that we all have a common ancestor is built into evolution (we have a common ancestor with chimpanzees, fruit flies and sea anemones, too, if you go back far enough). But the concept that it's within recorded human history is startling.
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Monday, July 10
The Price of Tea in China
You know it's going to be a bad day when you stop to pick up a prescription on the way to work and you hear this from the speaker at the drive-through window: Pharmacist: "Okay, that's going to be . . . oh, wow, that's expensive."
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Sunday, July 9
Photo Updates
Despite less-than-stellar photography conditions (sure, it's sunny the entire week, then grey and rainy on the day we want to take pictures . . .), Cris and I walked by the Omaha Jazz & Blues Festival ("by," not "through," given the ticket price didn't seem quite worth 20 minutes of photo time . . .) and down through the Heartland of American Park, where Cris amused himself by taking pictures of me trying to take pictures of bees. I put the park pictures in the Downtown folder (the last nine or so as of this posting) and the flowers and bees in the Macro folder (again, the last nine or so as of this posting). The water drop pictures came from my backyard while waiting for Cris to arrive (and while Cris was patiently ringing the doorbell wondering where the hell I was). Later on my brother stopped by (not Jeff; the twin one). He always wants to play chess when he's here, even though I always kick his ass.
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Friday, July 7
Congratulations!
My brother's girlfriend called me at 7:30 yesterday morning to let me know that she's no longer my brother's girlfriend. She's now his fiance. No wedding date yet ("sometime next year"), but I think they deserve a congratulations anyway. :)
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The Holocaust as Humor
Heard on the radio while I was in the shower this morning: An ad for a house-building company in Omaha that bills itself (in this and other ads) as being different from the "cookie cutter" home planning companies (the ones that limit color choices and housing designs in order to coordinate neighborhoods). I've heard previous ads from this company before; they have a fairly routine formula that uses a couple going to talk to a representative (depicted as some sort of authoritarian, unfriendly person) from one of the company's competitors. The ad today took that one step further. The authoritarian, unfriendly person spoke in a German accent, used the occasional German word and spoke of "the purity of the neighborhood" and the "balance of the master plan." Wow. I don't think I've heard a company compare their competition to Hitler before. I'm not sure I'm comfortable comparing a housing company to one of the most prolific murderers in history. Being the free speech advocate I am, I wouldn't protest it, but I'm probably not going to do business with a company that insensitive.
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Thursday, July 6
Accessories
During Linde's visit a few weeks ago we went to Hobby Lobby so she could look at yarn. She bought nothing. I, on the other hand, spent 45 minutes and had to get a second cart to hold the bounty I harvested from their half-off wall decor aisles. Among my prizes are the pivoting table mirror thingy and the (now copper, big surprise) geometric votive holder mounted on my bedroom wall. I bought votives at Target over the weekend, so now my bedroom is wrapped in the subtle scent of sonoma pear/cucumber mint/ivy (all three in each candle). I also bought some presents for other people, but obviously I'm not posting them here.
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Fourth Recap
Scott and Lisa were kind enough to invite me (they prefer the terminology "pleading for assistance," but that's just silly) to their family BBQ for the Tuesday holiday, where I spent the majority of the day as one-half of the Alec-Jay Velcro Strip(tm). Uber-friendly Kyle loves being passed around from person to person, but Alec is in the "Let's see your ID, pal" phase where she's content as long as people she doesn't know aren't touching her . . . or looking at her . . . or within 100 feet of her . . . (Okay, that last is an exaggeration.) There are about four people on her pre-approved list (basically her parents, her babysitter and me), and attempts to pass her from one of those four to someone not on the list elicits her patented "gecko finger grip" that bonds her to the shirt of the one holding her. By the end of the day she'd warmed up enough that she only gave suspicious looks to the people cooing at her, but it only took one person tickling her tummy to send her into a crying fit that didn't end until I took her around the corner of the house where she couldn't see anyone. I'm not complaining, of course. It means pretty much unlimited baby-holding time for me. So we watched fireworks out the window and ate the monkeybread I brought for Lane for most of the day while Kyle enjoyed depotting an African violet and all the kids and kidlike-adults had water balloon fights. It was a fun day. Labels: twins
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Wednesday, July 5
Teasers
Blah. They've started running trailers for A Scanner Darkly, but it's in "limited release" (which means not Omaha). I swear they're doing it just to mess with me.
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Tuesday, July 4
Fourth Thought
Happy Independence Day to everyone (even the Aussies in the house, who have a July fourth but not an independence day so to speak). Hope everyone has a safe holiday.
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Sunday, July 2
Music Updates
Rather than list the artists in which I've recently indulged, I just took shots of my iTunes folder (with my recent purchases and the top 25 most-listened-to songs for the last couple of months). The majority is the most recent Regina Spektor album (which had a phenomenal 19 tracks). The assorted stuff at the bottom is a nostalgia trip through "Best of the Nineties" collections. All good stuff.
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Saturday, July 1
The Definition of "Nice"
I was walking to the library today when I heard a voice yelling behind me. "Hey!" I kept walking (that's not specific enough for me to even look). "Hey, guy with the backpack!" I wasn't actually carrying a backpack, although I did have my camera bag. At this point I was pretty sure he was yelling at me, but I kept walking anyway. "Hey, guy in the green shirt!" Now I knew he was yelling at me. I finally stopped and turned around. A guy in his late forties was yelling at me from the other end of the block. Not halfway up the block. An entire block. He waved his arms for me to come back, and when I didn't move he finally (in a very out-of-shape way) huffed up to me, then had to stop to catch his breath. "I've been waiting for this bus to show up, but I'm tired of waiting. How much would it cost me to have you drive me to [address clear across town]?" Yeah, I'm going to pass on that, and I told him so. "Dammit, aren't there *any* nice people left in Nebraska?" he asked, then stormed off cussing me under his breath. Somehow, I think there *are* a lot of nice people left in Nebraska. I think he's confusing "nice" with "stupid," as in "stupid enough to let a strange man into your car and then drive him clear across town." I'm not lacking in the compassion department, and if you're in a *real* emergency I'll do what I can to help, but I'm afraid you're going to need something more than "I'm tired of waiting on the bus" (in hindsight, I should have told him to take the money he wanted to pay me and call a cab, but then he probably would have wanted to borrow my phone).
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