Diskage:
DVD • Brotherhood of the Wolf
CD-ROM • Empty
CD Player
• Soundgarden - Bad Motor Finger
• Mad Season -  Above
• System of a Down - Toxicity
• God Lives Underwater - Life in the So Called Space Age
• Metallica - ...and Justice For All

Books Lying Open
• The Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were, Michael Page & Robert Ingpen

Soul-Devouring Worry
• The rattle of bass-broken speakers.

When I Grow Up:
• Postcards will be more than ironic reminders of a life less traveled.

Curse of the Day:
• May the first sight you see each morning be the last sight you see each night.

Daily Update
So if you're going to meet some people for dinner, and you don't know quite where the restaurant is, but are vaguely familiar with the general area, and you write down the name and address of the place, it's really a good idea to take it with you, rather than leaving it on your desk when you dash off. That way you won't get to the general area and not remember the name of the place, and won't have have anyone's phone number to call and ask about it, and won't drive around hoping something rings a mental bell for an hour before giving up and driving back home, just in time to get a call from one of the people you were supposed to be meeting at the restaurant an hour previous.

This is all hypothetical, of course.  I'd never do anything like this in real life.

I'll do DVD mini-reviews tomorrow.  Listing of the ones I got Friday: Pulp Fiction, Akira, Record of Lodoss War (ep1-13), Kiss of the Dragon, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and Angel Heart.  I've seen all of them now but Pulp Fiction, and since I've seen it on VHS about ten times, it's not a real priority.  I just watched Kiss of the Dragon and Brotherhood of the Wolf this evening, and enjoyed them both, to some degree.

Brotherhood is not exactly a good movie, mostly due to getting absurdly-melodramatic during the conclusion, which drags on for about the final 45 minutes.  It certainly tries hard though, as hard or harder than any movie I can ever remember seeing.  Gorgeous photography, costumes, scenery, and the first hour was damn near brilliant.  It's impossible to compare to anything, there are so many genres and styles crammed in.  I'd call it an action, kung fu, swashbuckling, murder mystery, supernatural, monster thriller, period piece with a lot of nudity, set in pre-revolutionary France.  And that hardly scratches the surface.

I have to recommend it for any action- movie fan, even though my list of improbable or impossible or absurd stuff would be almost as long as my list of cool stuff. That's if I actually composed such a list, and while silly, I wouldn't put it past me.

I watched a bit of a college football game on ESPN2 Saturday evening, but had to turn it off, mostly since one of the announcers was driving me crazy.  I didn't get his name, but he was some Huckleberry with an accent to prove it.  The game featured Northwestern vs. Ohio State. That's "Ohio" as in "Oh-hi-oh".  It's not real hard to say it correctly.  The announcer's version, which he said about three times a minute most closely-resembled "uh-HI'errr styte".

Almost "A higher state".  No, there's no "R" in "Ohio".  And I don't think he was making a transcendental pun.

Some news.

• Ding dong, the witch is dead.  I would join all citizens in making merry, but I really don't give a damn about baseball, not with Football ongoing and basketball starting up soon.

• Some guy in China tried to jump over or onto the Great Wall, and um... died.  He was doing it with a mountain bike, and it's hard to tell exactly what happened from the pictures and captions, but his spectacular failure and subsequent mortality are well-demonstrated. This is one you won't be seeing in a Mountain Dew commercial, I suspect.  You can see several pictures of him here, that I grabbed from the news services.  The bottom one features him with a bloody nose and face, post-crash, pre-death, so don't scroll down that far if you don't want to see it.  The crash sequence is amazing.  It's not even a crash, it's a guy about twenty feet from a bike and about 80 feet in the air, coming down.

• In another series of photos, Britney was at some fashion show in Milan and wrapped into a painfully-tight dress by Versace.  It's partially transparent, showing off her well-toned cheeks, and the dreaded "upper glutemous fissure" as the always-entertaining CAP Alerts guy calls it.  Bonus points if you can look at Gianni Versace's face without wincing.  I think she's an all-natural freak, as opposed to the Michael Jackson surgical method. The family would have kept her locked in the attic in the old days, lest rumors of satanic influences spread.

• More deaths due to eating contaminated meat.  This one bothers me, since it's sliced turkey, and that's about the only type of meat I ever eat, other than occasional chicken or fish in a restaurant.

Each year, about 2,500 Americans come down with listeriosis after eating foods--most often meats, raw vegetables and soft cheeses--contaminated with Listeria bacteria. While infection may only result in a transient gastrointestinal illness in healthy individuals, it can prove deadly in the very young, the very old, or those with compromised immune systems, such as people with HIV/AIDS.

CDC officials are advising that persons in high-risk groups residing in the affected states "reduce their risk of infection by not eating sliced turkey deli meats or by thoroughly heating them."

Yeah, that's real likely.  The whole point in getting sliced lunch meat is that you can put them on bread and gobble them down cold.

• Someone is driving around the Washington DC area and murdering people at random, sniper style. Six have been murdered in public, out of the blue, in the last few days.

Five of the victims died within five miles of one another during a 16-hour span between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. All were gunned down in broad daylight in very public places: two at gas stations, one outside a grocery, another outside a post office and the fifth as he mowed the grass at an auto dealership.

The cops are proud to have proven that at least four of the people were shot by the same gun.  Was that really in doubt?  I mean how many random, one-shot, broad daylight kills with a rifle are there in a given day?  It would seem a pretty safe bet that the same person is doing it, and using his favorite gun.

The only real lead is that someone thinks they saw a shot from a white van.  Which is hardly any lead at all, since it's probably inaccurate, the shooter can rent a van to use, switch vehicles, walk to shoot, stop entirely, etc.

• And our new "too much free time" poster child is: glowing keyboard modifications.

This top shot is large since I wanted the nubby, bumpy texture of week old rats to be visible.  They always look a bit like those weird wrinkly short-haired dogs at this age, sort of pudgy with baby fat and extra skin and somewhat of a plucked chicken texture.

I put the mother up next to them to try and get a few family shots, but she was too active, pacing around and moving the whole time.  Two of the shots were blurry and two others she was standing on top of or in front of them, ruining the side by side effect I was seeking.  The only decent one is right here, and it's pretty cute, with her standing up and sniffing the spider plant tendril that's hanging down to the right. No thumbnail, so you'll have to click to see it, or else live the rest of your life in misery, forever wondering, "what if?"  The choice is yours.

Same rats, 6 days later.

It looks like all 9 of them are going to be either the color of mama or dada, meaning they'll be cream, peaches, or possibly orange.  You can't tell the light colors apart until they are at least 2.5 weeks or older.  I'm surprised there's not more variety, but it's always rather a roll of the dice, especially since I don't know what any of the grandparents looked like.

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