Thursday, May 24, 2007
Summertime Blues and Fan Movie News
Much like the proverbial groundhog seeing its shadow and doing something or other probably involving a Bill Murray film perpetually airing on basic cable, this is the annual "it must be summertime if Flux is starting to bitch about hot weather as though he somehow thought it might not happen this year." It's been in the high 80s for a couple of days, and as usual when it's finally hot for several days in a row, I'm damn depressed. It hasn't been hot enough to bother with the A/C, but I've been sitting in front of a fan all day and sweating and wishing it were oh... November. November would be nice. Or I could just be somewhere it doesn't ever get hot. Bleh.
After trying (with limited success) to work on at least one of my myriad projects during the hot day, I kept waiting for it to get cooler so I could eat. One advantage of the hot summer is that I usually end up losing weight, simply because I never want to cook or eat anything other than like, fresh fruit. During the day, at least. What usually happens is I starve all day and come darkness/coolness I eat too much bad stuff. Tonight, for instance, I decided that I deserved a pizza after not eating but some orange juice and an apple all day. *urp*
While waiting for it to cook, I turned on the TV and while clicking around in 10:15pm, pre-SportsCenter/John Stewart show boredom I ended up hitting
Resident Evil: Apocalypse and watching the last 45 minutes. Again. I'd seen that much of the movie before, and oddly enough, on the same channel I've never watched otherwise.
Oxygen, which goes by "O" and which I always think means "The Oprah Network." It's basically a younger-skewing Lifetime Network, with nothing but women's shows, but not all the sappy soft focus Hallmark movies filled with commercials for minivans and Pampers.
I mention it since it's so weird that they have mindless bloody zombie action movies like
Resident Evil 2 on. I guess it's kind of appropriate, the film primarily stars Milla Jovinovich, who is some sort of genetically-enhanced superhuman, as she and some other disposable fools roam around the improbably-named "Raccoon City" which has been turned into a zombie wasteland by a mutagen released by the Haliburton-esque Umbrella Corporation. The plot is of course entirely irrelevant, since the movie is just a long series of nighttime action set pieces, as the two female leads kill zombies with their bare hands and occasionally guns. Throw in some evil black-suited stuntmen guards for the Umbrella Corp., scheming and nefarious scientists, random innocent bystanders/comic relief, mutant cenobites, and incompetent anti-terrorist teams, and you've got yourself a movie.
Technically.
I mean it's stuff happening on a screen, for about 90 minutes, but I don't know if it would meet any real standard as a film, since nothing in it makes any sense. There's kind of a plot, and the characters don't change names in the middle or act in totally-illogical fashion. But that being said, nothing ever follows any logic. No one would ever react the way they react, none of the physical actions are ever believable, no one's motivations or behavior matches what a real human would do under those circumstances, etc. I think you could convene a small group of sane humans, break down the film into 30 or 40 individual scenes, and discuss them, and in no more than 10% of them would anyone in your film group be able to defend the behaviors or outcomes of the events on film. It's a complete jumbled mash of random excuses to blow stuff up or kick people through walls, and while Hollywood action pictures have a long history of that,
Resident Evil 2 takes it to another, almost farcical level. It could have been a really funny movie, in the hands of a competent screenwriter/director. It's actually not that bad, I mean it's no
Robocop 3, but that's mostly because the stars are much prettier and they had a lot more money to throw at the screen. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but it beat professional poker, and I was watching it under ideal circumstances: with one eye while cooking/cutting/eating pizza, enjoying the cool air that came with darkness, and surfing political blogs at the same time. I can't imagine sitting through it without commercial breaks or distractions, though.
The oddest part, and put it over the edge into blog-worthy, was the fact that it was on the O network, which meant after every 6-8 minute chunk of zombie killing and explosions there were 3 minutes of commercials for home decorations, and products to put on your hair, smear on your face, or insert into your vagina. Again, they certainly beat the cheap beer, Girls Gone Wild, and "male spray perfume with a butch name that will turn women into strippers when they smell you" commercials I expect with that quality of movie on basic cable, but they are a bit discordant.
Returning to the movie, it's got about the reviews you'd expect. RT
tallied it at 19%, and since the movie's a few years old, there's
an Ebert review. He sums things up pretty well, as usual.
The movie is an utterly meaningless waste of time. There was no reason to produce it, except to make money, and there is no reason to see it, except to spend money. It is a dead zone, a film without interest, wit, imagination or even entertaining violence and special effects.
I saw
Hot Fuzz with Malaya a few days ago, and in a way Resident Evil 2 reminded me of it.
Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop comedy action pic by the guys who did
Sean of the Dead, and it's very funny and clever and unbelievably over the top. It's inventive, and has literally every action movie cliche imaginable, to the point of self-referential distraction. That's the point, of course. Sort of like
Team America, it's almost off putting the first time you see it, since you spend half the film shaking your head in an, "I can't believe they went there." sort of way. My point, if there is one, is that
Resident Evil 2 is basically a straight, non-tongue-in-cheek version of the outrageously satirical action comedies. It's odd to compare the two types of films, since I think
Resident Evil 2 could, with nothing more than slight editing and a bit of dialogue redubbing, be turned into a very funny comedy. It's already a visual self-parody, it just needs some dialogue to complete the task.
In the same way that good blogs are already far more interesting than the mainstream news articles they discuss/dissect, I can see a day in the not too distant future, as video editing and producing hardware and software get ever cheaper and easier to use, when amateurs will remix TV shows and movies into products far better and more inventive (to my demographic, at least) than they were in their original, stale, formulaic, mainstream configuration. People have been doing that already, from the
JarJar-less remix of
Episode One to
TROOPS, to the
purist edit of The Two Towers, to the approximately 500,000 AMVs on YouTube and elsewhere, with 4 or 5 minutes of scenes from an anime cut to some rock tune.
It's something to do while enduring a hot summer day, at least.
Labels: movies, summer, weather
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The best $349 we'll ever spend.
As hinted last time out, Malaya and me gave in to the record heat wave, now stretching towards its third week, and got an air conditioner. We wanted
a portable one; they run about $400 and manage about 9000 BTU, which is enough to cool a small apartment. We figured we could use it in the living room during the day and move it into the bedroom at night, ensuring our sleeping comfort. Well, sleeping tolerance, at least.
Unfortunately, we came to that decision after more than a week of very high temperatures, and by that time there weren't any to be had. I spent a couple of hours Friday calling just about every Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe's, Sears, etc in the area, trying to find some portable A/C units, without success. Everyone was sold out, if they carried them in the first place (window models seem far more common), and no one had any idea when more might arrive.
I called some more Saturday morning, since a couple of WalMart's had said they might get some in Friday night, but when that went for naught, we headed out to a Kali workshop, planning to pick up a window A/C model on the way home. Friday had been hell, high just over 100, and humid so the heat lasted. We were sitting in the living room at 1am, with fans gusting, and sweating since it was still 87 outside. I've never seen weather anything like this in my 3 years in NoCal, and everyone else seems pretty shellshocked by it too.
Saturday and Sunday were forecast to be more of the same, and with the weather supposedly "cooling" (as the weather dudes on the local news said) to a still freakishly-high 88 by the middle of the week, we just couldn't wait any longer. So we left the BBQ/picnic after Kali a bit early, and hit several stores in a huge shopping center down in Union City. They've got a Target, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Lowe's, and lots more spread out over a mile or so of mercilessly-hot parking lots, and while Wal-Mart was completely sold out of every type of a/c, Lowe's had a stack of heavy duty, 18,000 BTU window coolers. They were big ass things though, 110 pounds in the box, so we went on and checked the other stores just to see what variety we might find.
Home Depot had a few of about the same size, but unfortunately their plugs were 220v/20amp, or something like that. Not ones you can plug into a normal socket, and since they require a heavier line, like the kind that you plug washer/driers into, we would have had to get a new faceplate and a new amp for the fuse box, and I would have had to do some wiring. Malaya was not happy with that option, so we headed back to Lowe's, where we'd foolishly not marked the plug type.
We got lucky there; they still had a bunch of the giant a/c units (surrounded by sweaty, milling white people asking, "do you have anything smaller?") and better yet, while they were 208-230 volts, (or something like that) and had plugs that would fit our wall outlet. The outlet beside the little cabinet at the rear of the living room that we've had a kitty door cut into for 3 years, and two litter boxes inside of. Luckier was my foresight in crawling back there a couple of days ago, and seeing the plug and remembering what it was shaped like. (Two narrow sideways bars over the round grounding plug.)
- -
OAbout like that, as my expert ASCII art illustrates.
We weren't sure about the model, and it was a towering 18,000 BTU, more than double what we'd been thinking about buying, but these were almost literally the only air conditioners within 100 miles, and it was absolutely broiling outside, so we said what the hell, and made the purchase.
The first hard part was putting it in the car. I can carry more than 100 pounds without much trouble; I pick up Malaya all the time and I do lifts with 40 pound dumbbells in each hand at the gym and I've carried in more than that much weight after CostCo trips (50 pounds of rice, 30 pounds of catfood, with a 36 pack of Pepsi on top). The problem with the AC is that it's big; the box was about 2.5 x 2.5 x 1.5 feet, with no handles, and as such I couldn't really get my arms around it. I could hold it along the narrow length, but then it was standing up way over my head, which wasn't stable in my grip and completely blocked my vision. I was okay levering it up into the trunk, and then taking it out of the trunk at home, but I couldn't carry it without fearing I'd stumble and drop it and break the goddamned thing.
Fortunately, Malaya works out too, and she was able to hold one end while I held up the other, and we slowly worked our way up the stairs and into the condo. Once there I started looking at the compartment on the wall where the old A/C had been (hence the plug and the box we've been using for the cat bathroom). We'd never seen the unit; the previous owners took it with them, or perhaps it broke long ago and they threw it out. At any rate, the box had always been empty and covered over with new wood, through which Malaya's dad had cut the hole for the cat door, years ago when she first moved in.
The second problem was the size of the hole. It was impossible to precisely measure with the wooden cover over it, but it looked the hole was going to be just slightly too small. Wide enough by a few inches, but just a fraction too low. Literally, like an eighth of an inch too low. We're talking the thickness of a coin, but we couldn't tell without some destruction.
Before we got going on that, we made a call. Another customer at Lowe's had mentioned seeing portable A/C units a few days before, at Fry's. "Of course!" we thought, "Why didn't we think of Fry's?" They're a huge computer store, but they sell every sort of household-size electronic gadget; not appliances, no microwaves or vacuums or washer/driers, but lots of cool stuff. Every kind of computer item, but also televisions, stereos, wine coolers, mini-fridges, and more. And what self-respecting geek doesn't have a portable A/C unit in his computer room? How else can you keep things cool with 10 computers burning it up during a LAN party?
So when we got home we called Fry's. (Driving straight there was out of the question, since I was 99% sure they'd be sold out, and besides, the route there took us right by our home, and even if they'd had a portable a/c unit, we could not have fit it and the big one from Lowe's in my car at the same time. Not without leaving Malaya behind, at least.)
So we muscled the big one into the house, chugged another water each, and called Fry's. What did the woman say when she answered the phone?
"Thank you for calling Fry's, we're open until 11pm tonight and if you're calling about the air conditioners we're all sold out."
I laughed and said, "Thank you." and hung up.
Then I chugged another water (I'd had 3 gatorades and maybe 8 bottles of water already that day) and got to work on the wall while Malaya headed out to a pet store. After all, we weren't just gaining an air conditioner, we were losing a cat potty, and she wanted one of those boxes shaped like a turtle shell, with a built in top and sides so they wouldn't kick litter all over the house.
About like this one, as it turned out.
Tearing off the wall was quite a chore, and the fact that I was doing it in 99 degree heat didn't help much either. After I got the front off I removed the hinged door on the back patio (which we previously swung open to remove the litter boxes to scoop them) and then spent about 20 minutes just sweeping all the loose litter out. The cats kick, the stuff goes everywhere, and we had maybe 10 pounds of litter in there. I ended up cutting a hole in the top of the plastic container of new cat litter just so I could pour the old in for later use. Yes, reusing pre-kicked cat litter. Gee, I sure hope it's good enough for them to shit on.
Once I had the box cleaned out and the carpet remnants reemovved, Much to my surprise, it turned out that the box was a metal case with a bottom that slid out; clearly something that had been installed for the previous a/c unit, and that had fit it properly. It was much too low for our new one, but we were still hoping it would just fit into the hole, once I removed the metal housing. This was a lot easier said than done, especially with my hammer and other good tools in Malaya's office where they were taken last week for some picture hanging duty, but I eventually managed to power out some big screws and pry loose 8 finger-length nails (such fun with only a screwdriver and pair of pliers), and the box was mine!
At which time I discovered, much to our shared horror, that the hole was in fact, about 1/4 too low. Or possibly not tall enough. And it remained too small, even after we vigorously sanded down the upper edge of sheetrock on the inside, and said a lot of bad words. There was no making it any bigger, either. Whoever cut the hole in the wall did it with tools we do not possess, and then nailed thick wood inside, above and below, to give the heavy A/C unit something to be anchored to. It's basically a window through the wall, at floor level, but without any sill. And it's a fraction of a centimeter too short for our a/c to fit.
We weren't going to give up at that point; not with the temp still near 100 at 6pm, and a miserable night in front of fans ahead of us. So with more grunting and straining I got the a/c unit outside, and we propped up the metal plate from the old a/c box, and levered the front of the new unit through the hole, and blocked off the extra spaces at the sides with some foam and a towel and some duct tape. Yes, it really does fix everything. Except enlarge openings that are slightly too small for the applicance you wish to cram into them.
Our makeshift solution wasn't pretty, but it's almost identical in function to the ideal; the front of the a/c unit is just about six inches further back than we'd planned. We're not going to leave it there; but we need a tool to chew up the wood a bit. Just a little bit removed from the top and bottom should be enough to slide the big, heavy, metal a/c unit into the wall, and once it's in we'll add a strip of wood to the one side that's too wide, paint it white, and that will be that. The question is what are we going to do with the thing come winter. Sudden runaway global warming aside, it's cool-to-cold here from October through May, and we really liked it when the cats had their litter boxes outside. So maybe we'll pull the a/c out of the wall and stick it in a corner somewhere come fall, and reinstall it next summer, if we're unfortunate enough to still be living here then?
I've gotten ahead of my story though, for words can hardly do justice to the blissful joy we experienced when the a/c had been running for a few minutes, and the cold air began to pour forth. It did almost nothing at first; cooling the room about as much as your open fridge does to your kitchen. It had quite a bit of work to do, obviously, with the entire apartment up over 95 degrees, but it chugged along valiantly, and we were suddenly quite happy they'd only had 18,000 BTU models, instead of a much less powerful 10,000 BTU like we'd been planning to buy.
After an hour the living room right in front of the a/c was cooling, but mostly along the floor, and only in front of the unit. It's funny; the plastic vents on the inside can be turned a bit to the sides, like the ones in a car, but they don't turn very far, and the air was mixing about as easily as the
Rios Negro and Solimoes.
Directly in front of the vents, and up to about thigh height, the air was like 75, and very comfortable. Chest height, or a foot to either side of the path of the vents, it was 85. A step further to either side, or around the corner in the kitchen or bathroom or bedroom, the temperature was unchanged, and pushing 100.
So we left. Turned the a/c fan on high, laid out some cool clothing, shared a quick cool shower, threw on our clothing, and all but ran out the door. Our celebratory dinner was a Todai, and though my meal was most memorable for the fact that I drank 5 full glasses of Pepsi, and a fair amount of Root Beer and water too, it was pretty tasty. And by the time we got home the living room was feeling pretty comfortable, though the rest of the condo was still meltingly hot. Especially the bedroom.
We couldn't take the cool to the bed, so we did the next best thing. Dragged the Memory Foam matress cover out into the living room, threw a fresh sheet on top, and sacked out as early as we could stand to. Sleeping in front of the cold fan wasn't that great; either my toes were cold or my core was hot, and the blowing air on my face wasn't pleasant. I went to bed around 1 and got up at 6, after waking up at least every hour all night, but it beat the hell out of sweating away the night in the bedroom. And we would have sweated; thanks to the humidity the temp never got below about 74 outside, and the bedroom was still 87 at about 9am, despite the window being open all night. It's about 83 in there now, with the window closed and the door open and a fan blowing cool air in from the hallway.
I'm not sure if this A/C unit will ever get the bedroom cool, at least not while the outside temps are so grossly above normal, but that's more the fault of our apartment layout than the power of the a/c. I'm sitting here Sunday afternoon at 2, wearing house pants, a t-shirt, and socks, and I'm actually a little cold, this room's gotten so nice. If you stand with your back to the a/c and take 5 steps, then turn left in the hallway and take four steps, then turn left and take 4 more, you'll bump into the bed. And if you didn't, and physical objects didn't slow you down, another left turn and another five steps would put you back just about where you began. As they say, 2 wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do.
There's not much air flow down the hallway and then into the bedroom, not even with fans helping it along (I ran a box fan full speed blowing out the bedroom window last night for hours, to negligible effect.) and with today's forecast just as miserable as yesterday's and tomorrows, I suspect we'll be sleeping on the living room floor again. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Especially not once Malaya returns from her parents' house with our inflatable air mattress.
Tragically, the new a/c wasn't without casualities. Besides yesterday's sore back and today's aching right bicep (strained it lifting something, at some point), and a pair of weird little cuts on my right hand, the constant exhaust of super hot air basically BBQed one of our favorite and (previously) healthiest plants. You see it here this morning, and it was sitting maybe 4 feet behind the a/c unit, where it's been growing and blocking the view up into our bedroom or several years. It's been doing okay with the furnace weather, but the kiln exhausts from the a/c literally cooked most of the leaves.
Still, no glorious battles are won without losses, and if that plant, and the four others I moved from beside our bedroom window before they could join it, are the only prices we pay for this liberation from the tyranny of baking heat, it's a clear victory for our side. (At least until we get next month's electric bill...)
Labels: summer, weather
Friday, July 21, 2006
Everyone complains about it but no one does anything about it...
It's about the time of year that I usually start bitching about the hot weather. I haven't been commenting since 1) I bitched a bunch some weeks ago when it was 100 for three straight days while my parents were visiting, and 2) it's just too hot to bother.
You know how they say after a while prisoners no longer dream about being free? That's what it's like here. I know it used to be comfortably cool during the daylight hours, and that I could often wear socks and a shirt during the day without immediately filling them with involuntary bodily secretions, but it's hard to remember those halcyon days of yore. Also known as early June.
So far 2006 has been the hottest year in human record, both in the US and worldwide, and late July's doing nothing to change that fact. It's been in the low 90s here almost every day this month, and it's going to continue for
the forecastable future. In fact that forecast is pretty much unchanging; it's been 88-93 (31-33c) for the high every day for weeks, and during that entire time they've been predicting 5 more days of the same, before some gradual cooling back towards the mid-70s that we average during this month. This pretty well defines the accuracy of human weather prediction; they can forecast hurricanes and stuff now thanks to satellite photos and radar, but the rest of the time they just say it'll be about what it was today for the next few days, before gradually regressing to the mean. And they'll usually be right.
The sad part is that I find myself checking the weather.com forecast every day when it's hot (and never when it's cold, raining, etc), even though I could write the forecast myself, with 99% accuracy. (That's accuracy compared to the weather.com forecast, not to actual reality, which pretty well does what it wants.)
It's not horrible weather; it cools off at night and it's nice in the morning until about eleven, and we don't have the humidity that's
killing all those old people in the midwest; I just dislike any temperatures over about 80, and find myself, more than ever, wanting to just up and move to Half Moon Bay. Where it's 64 every day of the year.
No, really.
Failing that, we could use an air conditioner to make the days tolerable and the nights sleepable, but it seems so pointless. Our condo is just one bedroom, and the bedroom winds around a hallway to the livin room, so there's little airflow. A/C in the living room wouldn't help the bedroom, or vice versa, and those portable A/C units are so loud Malaya couldn't sleep next to one anyway. Besides, it's usually hot enough to want one about 2-3 weeks all year here... at least that's the case in years that aren't the hottest in recorded human history.
The heat wave's killing my productivity, as it always does. I should just fight through that shit, but try as I do, I am never very successful at writing or editing fiction when I'm sitting in front of a fan with sweat running down my back. And then I'm so relieved when it's finally cool that I tend to screw around for a couple of hours, and I'm tired all the time because I'm not sleeping well in the daytime heat, etc. In summary, not everything is exactly as I want it to be. Waahh, waaahhh, boo-hoo, sob.
Update: 99 here today and the heat has officially cracked us. With at least 4 more days of this forecast, and August and September the hottest months in our part of the world, we decided to get a portable air conditioning unit. Unfortunately, as the past hour of website looking and local store calling has shown me, everyone else had the same idea, and there's not a portable a/c unit to be had in the Bay Area. Plenty of window units, but that's not something that'll work in our apartment. I called Home Depot (they only sell portables online in NoCal), Sears (only window units in stock and poor selection), two nearby OSH hardwares (don't stock portable and sold out of window), Lowes (don't sell portable), and the eight closest Wal-Marts.
I hate Wal-Mart and refuse to enter their hellish cave-like stores, but in this instance I'll bend my usual rule. Unfortunately, 4 of them never had any portables in stock, and the other 4 were all sold out. One did say they might get some more in tonight when the delivery truck arrives, and yes, we're planning on calling them about every hour just in case. It's a sad state of affairs, but we figure $450 split two ways is more than worth it to counter this hellish heat, even if it does tack $50 a month onto our electric bill. We'll never use the thing after September anyway.
Labels: summer, weather
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The only time I care about the weather...
As long-time readers will recall, my only real concern with the weather is when it's too hot. I like it cold, I like rain, I like hail, I like it cloudy, etc. I can tolerate boring sunshine, but after 20 years in weatherless San Diego I'm quite happy with some inclement conditions now that I live in the Bay Area, where they frequently occur.
This was the wettest spring ever in Northern California; it rained something like 28 days straight in February, but did I complain once? (Well, complain about something other than peoples' general inability to drive on wet roads, I mean.) I like wind, I like snow (not that it's ever cold enough here for that) etc. All I ask is that it not be too hot, and the only times I'm ever driven to check the local weather and forecast is when it gets hot. And I've checked every day for the past week.
Last weekend it was hot. Way hotter than usual, like 20 degrees (F, 8-10C) warmer than usual for any month of the year, much less late June, since we get our hottest weather in August and September. Things cooled down to just above normal early this week, but yesterday was hot, and today is hotter. Curious in my misery, I headed to the weather.com page for our local area, and found this discouraging sight.
So um... yeah. It's so hot it's broken today's high?
That current figure isn't correct because it's nowhere near 102 right now. Our back patio thermometer says 87, and while it's deep in the shade, it's not refrigerated. Besides, it's only 1pm; sunset doesn't come until 9:30pm this time of year and the hottest temps are around 3 or 4pm, when it will be substantially warmer than it is now. And it's not going to be 110 today.
Nevertheless, it's 25-30 degrees above the average summertime high, and I'm not real pleased about it. And with the long term forecast
guessing estimating more of the same for the next week, I shall now commence weeping. It's inconvenient too, after doing virtually zero work for the past week with house guests, parents visiting, Malaya's party, my b-day, etc, I was really hoping to get back into things this week. But we don't have A/C, and when I'm sitting here at noon with a fan on me and sweat running down my back, I am not really at my most productive. It cools down at night, with the help of a couple of fans blowing out the hot air, but bleah. And yes, it's all psychological; people lived in these temps for centuries without A/C and they had humidity too (something we're blessedly spared in these parts), I can escape to businesses with A/C, it was hotter every year in San Diego than it ever is up here now, etc. I still don't have to like it.
Labels: summer, weather
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