There have been lots of stories about screaming children, especially on airplanes going around. Just ran across this rant that I liked. Just seems everyone’s tolerance and understanding has grown shorter as we isolate ourselves from each other. Almost makes me wonder if we are moving to a society more like “Surrogates” where everything is obviously perfect and we only interact through a virtual world.
Over the weekend we picked up a Wii Fit Plus at Costco. Sarah and I had been looking at it for awhile. I know that there is no way that the game itself will provide enough exercise to really get me to lose weight, but just having it these few days seems to be acting as incentive to get some exercise in. I have a feeling it’ll be just enough incentive to get us to do non-Wii workouts to try and beat the game, because some of the routines are actually quite difficult to perfect. The mid term goal is to learn all the routines over the next few months. The longer term is just to get the Wii from calling me fat. My little Mii is wonderfully rotund at this point. So here’s to working out. Anyone else up for a Wii Fit challenge?
[Originally published March 10, 2006]
If you’re squemish, you might not want to read this one.
So I had my ingrown toenails corrected on Wednesday. I had a correction when I was younger, I think in middle school, and boy did that hurt. The old doc at the HMO had to inject the anesthetic under the nail bed. That had been the worst pain ever. Since then I decided I never wanted to through that again.
Most of you know that we went up to NYC this weekend. We primarily went up to get the car fixed, but Mom and Dad took us out to dinner . Of course I can’t remember the name of the restaurant but it’s in Astoria and was a fabulous Italian restaurant. But of course our day had to be more interesting than that…
So we go into the city on Saturday to meet up with Sunny and Paul. I’ll put up some pictures in the gallery somewhere. It was a very rainy day. We went out and had lunch at Applebee’s, which was pleasant. We decided to go down to K-town to have coffee and dessert. It was rather cold in there and we were pretty wet. We had our dessert and tried to make our way over to the Empire State Building. When we got there the security folks there told us that there was zero visibility on the roof. That was kindof a downer, but so be it. We made our way back out into the rain. read more »
So Roman Polanski is in the news again. He was finally arrested in Zurich while trying to attend a film festival that was honoring him. I’ll leave his background and filmography to Wikipedia to discuss, and it’s just a waste of time for me to rehash the whole thing. The thing that bugs me so much is the response to his arrest and extradition request. Lots of articles are coming out now (and here, here, and here) about all the people who seem to think he should be released. There’s the French minister who is saying authorities should his rights, and there’s this petition signed by lots of Hollywood elite saying
“It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him,”
Huh WHAT? What makes him so special, or this “international cultural event” so special that a man should not be arrested for breaking the law? Would they have been ok with it if they let him attend then arrested him on his way home? This seems like an absolutely horrible standard. I will give them the fact that Polanski has had a troubled life. First he loses his mom to the Holocaust, then the Manson’s go and kill his wife and unborn child. These can be devastating things and I can see how they may contribute to some of his troubled thinking. But even with this, does this excuse him from showing up in court to face the penalties of his actions? Then you get rich quotes like this.
“You have to understand them, these poor stars. What’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t have the women you want, whether they’re above the age of consent or not, whether they’re willing or not; if you can’t flee abroad and prosper there while our country’s justice system looks after you, circulate freely wherever you want to go to be awarded medals and charms at international festivals, and then mobilise opinion in your favour when things start to get tricky?”
So if you are a celebrity 1. Poor you, you should be pitied for your fame 2. You can have any women you want (seems a bit sexist, I thought the French were all about equality) 3. You should be able to circulate freely to be honored as a celebrity even as a criminal.
He admits to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl in the 70′s. He was held for 42 days while they conducted psychological evaluations. Then he’s suppose to show up for sentencing, where the judge was thinking of giving him another 48 days in prison, so he decides to skip out and run off to France. I have never been to prison, and do not ever plan to do so, but California’s minimum sentencing guidelines at this point is 36 months for rape. He would have had a total of 90 days. Seems like he is getting off easy. Why does he get an exemption, according to all these outraged fans, politicians, and Hollywood actors, from doing the simple thing of showing up in court? Even in light of possible judicial misconduct, a new judge has agreed to resolve the matter, but all he has to do is show up in court. Why is this so hard? Why is everyone fighting so hard to let him off the hook? Why does everyone think he has a right to be let off? What has he done that is so great, so amazing, so life changing and beneficial to the world that he deserves to be above the law?
I am all for forgiveness. The victim has forgiven him, and it seems like the current presiding judge is willing to let this go. But can we really just him not finish up all the pieces that are required? Roman, just get to the court, get this over with, and guess what, now you can freely travel around the world without the threat of arrest and go attend your precious international cultural events. All you have to do is show up and admit you made a mistake by not showing up 30 years ago.
UPDATE: I just read a little commentary on Slate. I think the final paragraph does sum things up well.
Notwithstanding the due process concerns that the Polanski case raises—which are for legal scholars, not Hollywood directors, to quibble with—if we excuse Polanski from punishment, aren’t we really saying that his life is more valuable than the life of a 13-year-old girl’s just because he happened to direct Rosemary’s Baby? Taking that to its logical extreme, we have to assume that Bob Dylan can never go to jail, even if he rapes a teenager or two, and that Picasso could not have served time for whatever felonies he might have committed in his brazen lifetime, and—well, I could go on. Where would we draw the line? Does Leonard Cohen qualify? Neil Diamond?
In fairness, comparing apples to apples, as they say, the life of a great director is probably more valuable than that of a 13-year-old girl—young ladies that age are really irritating. But if we follow this modest proposal to its logical conclusion and valorize some life over other life, then we are creating a society that was last tried out on a large and (highly) organized scale by the Nazis, who are the bogeymen in Polanski’s closet. After all, to say that Aryans are better than everyone else is not much different than saying talented people are better than everyone else. And if we make this ruling for Roman Polanski, we pretty much have to do it for everybody.
[Originally posted March 17, 2006]
Ok I have no idea what this dream means, but it was at least entertaining. So somehow I had bought a Condo, but it was located inside a mall?!?! The upper floors were actually above the mall, and quite posh, but the living room/kitchen was on the first floor and all glass, so I could actually see all the mall shopper walking around. It was a really interesting layout with the kitchen more like a bar. There was a sink accessible from both sides and there was a shelf that slid out so you could get into the middle. Inside were the draw style refrigerators which were assessible from both sides, and the cooktop and oven was at another end so that you could could from either side of the bar. Pretty cool. The patio was actually inside the mall. The glass could frost over for privacy. Just seemed really weird. Ok go back to your regular day 
I’ve been following this website for a few years now. Some of the comics he writes are really out there, but others are right on point. It is really lots of geek humor. But on Monday he posted this comic and I have to say is probably one of the best ones to date. Anyway, follow the site, it’s really funny. Oh and when you go to the site, make sure you hover over the comics. There’s always a little more.
I probably shouldn’t call the rest of this camping since we shifted to Boston and got a hotel room.
Late in the night Sarah awoke to mysterious sounds outside. We got out of the tent and noticed our bag of Doritos got dragged to the edge of camp. We put the chips back on the picnic table and went back to sleep. In the morning as we had breakfast we noticed little paw marks on the picnic table, indicitave of a racoon. The trash bag was torn open too so looks like a raccoon wanted to share in our bounty. We spent the morning cleaning up the camp and packing everything into the truck. We left for Boston around 1030.
Paul was designated driver since he slept more than anyone else. He made it the whole 4 hours to Boston where we checked into a Hilton just outside the city. It was a pretty nice room and we relaxed/showered for a few hours before we met up with Jae for dinner. Since we had skipped lunch I improvised some egg and cheese sandwiches in the microwave using our left over Egg Beaters. hmmmmm yummmy.
We drove into Boston, which was horrible, around 1730. The Chinese restaurant was quite good and Sam stole the check from Jae. Jae felt bad and took us out to Cambridge Brewing Company. We ordered their sampler and settled on two choices. Overall the beers weren’t very good, but they salvaged it a bit with their Cambridge Amber. Paul had to go back to New Haven that night so Sarah and Sunny drove him to the train station while I hung out with Sam, Jae, and Mike (one of Sam’s classmates from UVA) and his wife. I think she felt a little out of place so she took off early. By the time Sarah and Sunny got back we had pretty much finished two pitchers, although I think I drank most of it. We dropped everyone off at their respective locations and went back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. All in all, just a travel day and some good company.
So we are now Day 3 into our trip. I woke first again, but wasn’t really up to actually getting out of my sleeping bag. It was a bit chilly last night and my bag was still nice and warm. Sam eventually woke, and made his way outside and “encouraged” us to all get out of bed. After we finally got up we started breakfast and we weren’t really up to anything particular. I think that activities from the day before really wiped us out, but Sam was intent on doing something. We headed out for a random drive on the western lobe of Mt. Desert Island. We kindof didn’t get out until 1100. We found the coastal seawall and enjoyed watching the waves run up the shore. We then kept going south along 102 and after some looping found our way to the lighthouse . It has some wonderful views down there, but it’s mostly private property (belonging to the commander of the Coast Guard or something like that.) We kept circling around looking for stuff and ended up travelling through this small dirt road and found ourselves at Seal Cove Pond . read more »
[Originally posted August 18, 2006]
I think I woke up first this morning. I ambled my way to the restroom to cleanup and lit the citronella candles on the way out. As I come back to the tent the rest of the party is gently rising from the tent, hungry. We broke out some eggs, bacon, sausage, onions, mushrroms, and peppers. While we ate we decided that we wanted to go kayaking. We called one place and they said they were all booked up. Now here’s the thing, instead of hanging up, he asked us to hold and CALLED the other kayaking companies around the island and found us a slot for 7! read more »