Talking to Myself Again

Non-sequitur of the Day

From When Harry Met Sally:

Sally: I'd like the chef salad please with oil and vinegar on the side, and the apple pie a la mode.
Waitress: Chef and apple a la mode.
Sally: But I'd like the pie heated, and I don't want the ice cream on top. I want it on the side, and I'd like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it. If not, then no ice cream, just whipped cream, but only if it's real. If it's out of the can, then nothing.
Waitress: Not even the pie?
Sally: No, just the pie, but then not heated.

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Thursday I picked up 4 videos at Blockbusters. I love the new 5-evening rental! Blockbusters is close by where I work, so I can pick up a movie at the end of the week and return it on Monday. This means no more late Sunday night drives to return tapes! Anyway, here are my reviews (with links to the Internet Movie Database).

Love Serenade: Um... well... I sort of liked this one up until the ending. Then one of the characters does something which made absolutely no sense in the story. I suspect the writer just got tired of the whole thing at this point and decided to end it so that he could move on to something else. Either that, or it's an Australian thing that I just don't get. Not recommended.

The Man in the Iron Mask: Pretty good. I was only vaguely familiar with the story before seeing the movie. What I liked most was seeing how they portrayed the various Three ex-Musketeers. I wouldn't say that they got their personalities down perfectly, but it was reasonably close. Recommended.

Dangerous Beauty: Quite good! A period piece set in Venice. (I have a weakness for period pieces set in Italy. I have no idea why.) A woman becomes a courtesan in order to have more freedom than she would have as a lady. (Courtesans are allowed to misbehave and do things like read books.) Recommended if you like period pieces.

Wings of the Dove: I like any movie with Helena Bonham Carter in it. Very good period film (set partially in Italy, naturally) with likeable characters and an interesting premise. The gist of it is that Kate (HBC) and Merton (Linus Roache) want to marry, but she'll be cut off from her money if they do. Millie (Allison Elliot) is rich, beautiful, has no family, and is dying. Perhaps, if Merton marries Millie, when she dies, she will leave him her money, allowing him to marry Kate. How's that for an Indecent Proposal? Recommended if you like period romances. Plus we get to see HBC in the nude.

Housekeeping Tip

Here's a housekeeping tip for everyone. If a carton of milk leaks in your refrigerator, when you clean it up, make sure you clean up all of it. In particular, be sure you look underneath those drawers at the bottom. If you don't, long after the fact you will find yourself wondering what the smell is and where it's coming from. Once you finally pull the drawers out and look underneath them, you won't like what you find -- particularly not if the previous tenant scattered baking soda all over the bottom of the refrigerator.

July 4 Visit, REALL, Skeptic News

Yes, I am alive! True, I haven't posted a new update here since June 30, but I am in fact still among the living.

So, what have I been doing since June 30? Well, let's see. In early July, I went home for the Independence Day weekend, visiting my parents, my brother, and various friends. We had the traditional bonfire (although markedly smaller and less alarming than in previous years, due to wet wood), as well as the traditional live band, games of Magic, fireworks, and alcohol. (As per tradition, I abstained from the latter two, so that I could be available to drive the wounded to the hospital.) I videotaped the band, Diggles Dozen, which turned out reasonably well. They sounded pretty good, actually, if you ignored the fact that the sound system was intentionally set to distort everything and sound like crap. I'm not entirely sure what the attraction is in making things sound like crap, but at least they succeeded. It must be like modern art or something.

Anyway, while I was out of town for that, I obviously couldn't update this journal. When I got back, I found that I had dropped out of the habit. And the longer I didn't update it, the more stuff I would need to write once I finally began again -- which caused me to put it off even further. In the meantime, I began to have an idea, which eventually lead to something which further delayed getting this updated.

One of my interests is organized skepticism. For those of you thinking, "What the heck is that?", here's a quick explanation. Some people believe in paranormal and pseudo-scientific subjects, such as UFOs, psychic powers, ESP, astrology, fortune telling, and so forth. Most of the people who don't believe in such things are content to laugh and go on with their lives. A few people, however, are sufficiently annoyed by such claims as to actually obsess about them, write articles complaining about them, and create entire web sites to complain about them some more. I'm one of those people.

I'm a member of (take a big breath) the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL, for short). We're a group of skeptics located here in central Illinois that get together monthly to complain to one another about the latest annoyingly weird claims being made. One of the things that I do is operate an unofficial web site for REALL. (For those of you who are interested, the site is located at "http://www.reall.org/".)

Well, back in early July I began to think about creating a new web site that would act as a "what's new page" for skeptic web sites. Whenever I located some recent update on a skeptic web site, I would create a link to it with a brief description. This would allow skeptics to come to one place to easily locate news. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. So, on July 26, the Skeptic News went online at "http://www.skepticnews.com/".

I post an update to the Skeptic News every morning. Since it went online two months ago, I've missed only two days, and that was simply because I was out of town. In short, I've been spending every morning posting updates to the Skeptic News instead of posting updates to this journal!

Of course, that's an over-simplification, but it's the only excuse I've got, so I'm sticking with it.

My Life by the Numbers

Yesterday: 237 pounds. I haven't walked since June 30. See what happens when I don't update my journal? I gain weight and stop exercising!