But nobody's home

If my apartment's management merely slipped letters under vacant apartment doors, they'd be absentminded at worst. But it's the fact that they also put letters under the door of the electrical closet that pushes them into the realm of hilarious incompetence.

More Wedded Bliss

Went to (believe it or not) my very first gay wedding today. The bride and the bride were both quite lovely. One was of African descent and the other Irish; as such, there was both handfasting and jumping the broom; the latter ritual turns out to be common to both cultures. Very cool stuff.

The White Crows

(Apologies in advance for the horrible mangling and simplification of science and philosophy and the philosophy of science. Clay may never forgive me.)

So, it's a general principle in science that it's impossible to reason your way from observations to absolute truth; you can disprove, but you can never prove. No theory in all of science is ever beyond question. To take the famous example: you've seen a great many crows in your life. They've all been black. Can you therefore conclude that all crows are black? Of course not.

I think it's pretty much the same story across the hall in philosophy-land. There, you don't worry so much about what can or cannot be observed, but there are still axioms, and they are never beyond reproach, and yadda yadda yadda you get the idea.

What I really wanted to say was that I miss the white crows. You know, the experiences that cause you to completely reevaluate what you think and start over from scratch. It happens all the time when you're young, but these days, I can't think of the last time I saw a white crow. Which is a pity, because it means that the patterns of my thought are staying basically the same. Which sucks. You're either learning or you're dying.

Thought at a wedding

When the bride walks down the aisle, the photographers are invariably snapping away madly at her. But I think they miss an even better image: the look on the groom's face.

Tommy Lee

So I just got done watching the first two episodes of Tommy Lee Goes to College, and while it's always nice to see your alma mater on television, I'm afraid it just doesn't work.

Obviously, it's intended to be a "fish-out-of-water" show, but they just didn't think it through. Tommy Lee is a painfully nonfunctional human being in any situation. Much like Ozzy and Anna Nicole, just following him around on any normal day would be liable to produce scenes of utter absurdity. Putting him in a college setting is just plain confusing, like you'd asked the bear riding a unicycle in a tutu to also escape from an underwater straightjacket while he's at it.

So is it entertaining? Occasionally, vaguely, and seemingly in spite of itself. I'll probably watch it anyway for the "I know that guy!" factor, but I don't expect any Emmys. Other random observations:

• They more or less managed to match the correct exterior and interior shots together, which is kinda impressive, since of course they didn't have to. The major exception being...
• Neihardt? My ass. I wish there'd been a room that huge when I lived there. I could almost believe it was some room I'd never seen, right up until the kegger. Uh huh. Funny how they glossed over the dry campus bit.
• The staff in general, and the professors in particular, come off shockingly well. They obviously managed to ignore the cameras and hullabaloo far more than I'd have expected.
• Did they take any of their own exterior/aerial footage, or did it all come straight from the recruiting office? The campus has never, never looked so good.
• Three full hours of free, primetime, network television commercial is a pretty good deal, but I bet they're not entirely happy about the timing. Classes start next week; by the time people are actually applying for next year, the show'll be long forgotten.
• The show is also a commercial for Tommy Lee's new album, but I wonder if that'll backfire. Above and beyond the unfamiliar equipment and styles, it doesn't seem too wise to depict your star as a man whose drug habits have obliterated any musical talent he might have had.

More Good Movies

There's a couple more movies I'm looking forward to that I forgot to mention before. With trailers:

Proof - that rarest of things, a movie about mathematics. I'm not sure whether my math major friends will be entertained or dismayed by it. But I saw it on stage a few years back and it rocked. (September 16)

Corpse Bride - Finally, the sequel, more or less, to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Only took a decade or so. We must have been very good boys and girls to get two Tim Burton films in one year. (September 23)

Serenity - Joss Whedon's utterly amazing TV series, Firefly, finally comes to the big screen. (September 30)

The Fog - remake of the 1970s John Carpenter horror flick of the same name. I've considered it a forgotten gem for a long time; apparently somewhere else is too. Hope it manages to be as atmospheric, no pun intended, as the original. (October 14)

The Chronicles of Narnia - Nuff said. (December 9)

And the trailers I neglected to link to last time:

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - November 1?

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - November 1?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - November 18.

Rent - November 23.

Pro-?

Construction begins on a new cathedral. They haven't managed to put up more than a few stones when the project is cancelled. It will never be built; we'll never know what it would have looked like.

Elsewhere, a sudden earthquake strikes an existing cathedral. The walls tumble, and all trace of it is rapidly erased. No one will ever get to see it again.

Which of these two situations is the more tragic?

There are no right answers, of course, but I suspect your gut feeling might predict some very important opinions...

Needlessly inflammatory

Last night I had a dream. I found myself in a desert called Cyberland.
It was hot. My canteen had sprung a leak and I was thirsty.
Out of the abyss walked a cow -- Elsie.
I asked if she had anything to drink.
She said, "I'm forbidden to produce milk.
In Cyberland, we only drink Diet Coke."

Heady Times

I just realized that this November is going to be my personal entertainment apocalypse. Not only are Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess coming out, but so are Rent, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Brokeback Mountain. That month also happens to be my birthday. Coincidence? I think not.

Somehow

I ranted a while back about how I wished that more screenwriters would dare to change the ending when they're doing an adaptation. But I forgot the prototypical example, which I saw tonight: West Side Story. It reenacts Romeo and Juliet, scene for scene, right up until the very end, which is dramatically different. In a way that makes it far more tragic than the original. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's high time you see it.

Speaking of, it must be a good musical to survive the ritual slaughter that is community theatre. I swear, the orchestra experienced some sort of collective musical puberty on stage. As Adam put it, "SomeWHERE A key for US"...

Code Insomnia

Oh, so that's why I don't code at home after work - I'd almost forgotten until I did it again last night. If there are any issues still unresolved by the time I go to bed, and there usually are, then I can't sleep a wink. I'm debugging and simulating in my head and it won't let me rest. Augh.