Letters to Holly

Thursday, November 29

Happy Birthday

To ensure there are no Three's Company-level misunderstandings, I told Your Sis about the MySpace page. I showed her how the site works and that I couldn't be found by searching for the name of our town. But when we did that search, we found a bunch of her students' pages. She was fascinated by what they were saying and how. They love to talk vulgar, only they do it badly. I think she could spend the whole night reading their pages.

We worked over rough drafts of research papers, and some of these are lousy. Lacking in basic sentence competence, and a number of these kids are from the local Private Academy for Precious Snowflakes Who Can't Hack Real Classrooms. Those parents are getting ripped off if they think their kids have a head start before entering high school. One paper was so bad we sincerely wondered if it were a Babel Fish translation of a paper written in another language.

Picture of the Day
I couldn't find the video. Even with my significant search-fu.

Wednesday, November 28

An Adventure into Another Universe

I've tried search engines and various email addresses to contact folks from my college days. A good number of those I managed to find have MySpace pages which allow you to email them only if you have an account. So, with a great trepidation unfelt since my very early days online, I signed up yesterday for a MySpace page. I then emailed via the site two gals I knew from college and university and let folks on one message board know I had taken the plunge.

It worked. I've heard back from one person with whom I shared an ECU newspaper office, and I've been befriended by the message-board people. I can see the appeal of the site. It works like a one-page website, but I prefer the options of my own page at GeoCities. That site's free 25 megs of space is plenty for what I want to do there. The MySpace page is strictly for those folks who are trying to find me or want to contact me.

I had a monster headache after work yesterday, bad enough to require medicine. I never get those kinds of headaches and certainly never take pills for them. It faded eventually, and Your Sis enjoyed the chance to play nursemaid again.

Picture of the Day
One of the new pics from 2008's Indiana Jones sequel. Screw the mileage, it's the years.

Tuesday, November 27

A Minor Correction

I wrote this yesterday:
4) Brooke seems to have trouble with the new baby, and she's quite the conversationalist.

This is wrong. I meant to say she has no problem with the baby. If not for the occasional feeding, you wouldn't have known there was a new baby in the house. She slept almost the entire time which is normal for this age, I learned. I don't know how much of Brooke's doll play is affected by the baby. I mean, she's almost three. Don't all girls go doll crazy at this age?

I worked on my commentary track experiment for the play DVD. I think I'll have to make two tracks; my DVD player is freezing as the original track got longer. I don't know how practical this is going to be for people to use. I think they'll have to play the DVD and the tracks using separate PC software, and that's clunky design.

Geek Pictures of the Day


The first official image of The Joker from the Batman Begins sequel. Even though I am a card-carrying geeknerd, I don't reflexively flinch from this new design of the character. Batman Begins was the best Batman story I've seen (or read) , and I look forward to seeing what they do in next year's film. Heath Ledger is a fine actor, to boot.

+ + +


In geek developments, the New York Times reports on Gail Simone, the new writer for the Wonder Woman comic. She's the first regular female writer in the franchise's 66-year history. She follows a five-issue fill-in arc by a female novelist, and, having read it, I can tell you she had no business writing the comic. The big companies love bringing in big names from other media, and only a handful have made the shift successfully. The title has veered wildly in quality over the past five years, and this new writer hopefully can right the ship.

Monday, November 26

Thanksgiving

It was a good drive with the parents both ways. Dad and I split the driving Thursday but I drove the whole way Friday, including the jaunt back up the mountain to Chez Ass Smack. I also drove twice and back to Hendersonville within 12 hours this weekend, and now, after my work commute, I'm pretty damn sick of driving. Here's the highlights:

1) Your Brother and Our Sis-in-Law made the same spread as last year minus a baked turkey. They fried both birds this year, and the fixins were damn good eats.

2) Your Brother has grown a beard to piss off his boss, who personally dislikes facial hair. This is a office-wide gesture to stick it to the man.

2a) Your Brother and Sis got to talk briefly on Friday morning, and he advised us to consider any baby choices carefully.

2c) This was after an extended grilling session Thursday from Our Sis-in-Law who was determined to discover just why we haven't banged out a child. Even My Mom backed me up during the conversation when it was obvious the questions just wouldn't stop.

3) Joanne and My Mom got along great.

4) Brooke seems to have trouble with the new baby, and she's quite the conversationalist. Also, she's obsessed with Dora the Explorer. If you want to win her over, make with the Dora talk.

4b) She also has about three dolls named Madison and another named Emily. This information could save your life one day.

5) We left after a Friday brunch, and I had to drag Mom away from Joanne so we could start driving.

6) My Parents are now officially old: We stopped often for potty and smoke breaks. Also, lunch at Waffle House.

6a) My Mom handled riding through Atlanta pretty well. The traffic was much lighter than we expected.

6b) There was no small plane with a banner advertising suit sales as You and I saw when we drove back from Alabama.

7) While it was a pleasant visit, it was a short visit. Drive in, eat, sleep, eat, drive back. We missed you, but you didn't miss anything big.

7a) Except me scaring Brooke when she asked me to chase her and then got scared and wailed and wailed and wailed. I wanted to die.

7b) But this incident seem to convince Our Sis-in-Law that, maybe, no, I should not have children.

I got up early Saturday to give blood. My cold had died down enough for me to do this (which I only do for free cookies). We watched Pan's Labyrinth that night. It's not a kids movie. At all. It's violent and creepy and dark. Of course, we loved it.

We caught up with Kathy and Travis for Sunday lunch, and I invited him out for a man-date to see The Mist, a film I've waited 20+ years to see. And it is very good. Some divergence from the original story, but it works very well at what it's doing. This is a horror movie with monsters, not a monster movie. So if you see it, prepare yourself for good acting and lotsa tension.

The NFL Contest
HER PICKS
NFC: New Orleans (5-6), St. Louis (2-9)
AFC: Indianapolis (9-2), New England (11-0)

MY PICKS
NFC: New Orleans (5-6), Carolina (4-7)
AFC: New England (11-0), San Diego (6-5)

My fantasy team got killed this week, bringing me to 6-6 for the season. We watched the Patriots evade a shockingly game Eagles team last night.

Picture of the Day
The Thing dressed as Blackbeard rapping NWA. I Photoshopped this for one of my message boards.