Month: July 2008

Sorry Benton

Our second disc of the TV show Due South came from Netflix the other day and tomorrow I’ll ship it back — unwatched.

We have such fond memories of the show, but we struggled to get through the first disc. Wanting to give it another chance, we kept it in the rental queue. Now faced with watching more episodes we just can’t do it. It is amazing how much TV has changed in a dozen years since it first aired.

The main detraction from our enjoyment of the show is the caliber of the transfer. The focus is soft, the colors muted and the contrast is muddy, it looks like you are watching 12 year old VHS tapes.

Started down, went up, still up.
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Goo Goo Eyes

Today we rode the tandem into work and our arrival time was around 15 minutes before the opening bell, so to speak, for most of the hourly employees, so quite a few of them were sitting under the break area awning getting in one last smoke before going to work. Unfortunately the bike rack where we are supposed to park is like 15 feet from the awning, so Donna and I have to unload our lunches and change of clothes right in front of the crowd.

Now a person on a bicycle is a rare enough sight as it is, but put two people on a long ass bike and we are talking parade level attention. One of the engineers was arriving at the same time and as he walked up to the building he noticed us unloading, but what he found most eye-catching was not us, but the looks of all the other employees openly gawking at Donna and I. He said nearly everyone was looking in our direction with sort of an incredulous look, as if they were thinking to themselves that no sane person would ride that thing.

Yesterday we had a very busy day, so instead of coming home and cooking something we dined out at what used to be one of our favorite southside eateries, Wing Place (why it “used to be” is the subject of another post.) When we were finished eating and heading for the door there was also a mom leaving with her daughter just in front of us. The girl was somewhere between to ages of seven and ten, very cute, with long curly light colored hair, a big ol’ smile and the largeest eyes you ever saw. I really noticed the eyes because they were aimed directly at me. This girl was staring at me like I was a movie star or a pony.

As it turned out, mom and daughter were parked next to us in the parking lot, so we were more or less following them. About half way towards the cars I got another look from the little girl. Donna wondered if I dripped a bunch of ranch dipping sauce down the front of my shirt and she hadn’t noticed. Mom loaded the little girl in the back of their Jeep Wrangler as we got into the Miata. The girl was looking over at me, with an almost wistful expression, like maybe she was wishing it was her getting into the Miata instead of Donna. As the mom was going around to the driver’s side of their vehicle we put the top down. The girl was still looking our way with her big eyes and her chin in her hands with her elbows on the side of the Jeep and I could swear she let out a sigh of regret, it was almost creepy.

Started down, still down.
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Thanks For The Coupon

Every once and a while the local Mazda dealer will send me a mailing that is supposed to get me to come in and let them service my car. The one I got today offered a free oil change using a new filter and topping off of vital fluids.

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Until you get to the fine print, then things get strange. “Plus applicable taxes.” Seven percent of nothing is…ahhh, let’s see, zero times zero point zero seven…carry the zero…is Nothing. Oh, wait a minute, I see how it is applicable, the next bit of fine print says, “Some vehicles may be slightly higher.” How much higher? Define slightly?

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 252

If I Had A Station Wagon

I would join the ASWOA and spend a substantial portion of my disposable income HERE.

While searching the web on how to say Happy Bastille Day I stumbled on this site, Uncertain Times, that is a web spelinkers delight. Oh, by the way, it is Joyeux Quatorze Juillet.

This guy is brilliant or certifiably insane: Ironic Sans. Which segues into one of my favorite TDPM quotes:

Will Turner: This is either madness… or brilliance.
Jack Sparrow: It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide.

Started down, went up, still up.
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What’s The Difference?

A lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He thinks that he is smarter than the deputy because he is a lawyer from a big city and is certain that he has a better education then any cop from this small town. He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the deputy’s expense.

The deputy says,” License and registration, please.”

“What for?” says the lawyer.

The deputy says, “You didn’t come to a complete stop at the stop sign.”

Then the lawyer says, “I slowed down, and no one was coming.”

“You still didn’t come to a complete stop.? says the deputy, ?License and registration, please.”

The lawyer says, “What’s the difference?”

“The difference is you have to come to complete stop, that’s the law. License and registration, please!” the Deputy says.

The lawyer says, “If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I’ll give you my license and registration; and you give me the ticket. If not, you let me go and don’t give me the ticket.”

“That sounds fair. Please exit your vehicle, sir,” the deputy says.

The deputy takes out his nightstick and starts beating the ever-loving crap out of the lawyer and says, “Do you want me to stop, or just slow down?”

My God, It’s Full Of Stars*

I am slowly (and somewhat reluctantly if you ask my wife) painting the middle bedroom. We have painted the walls in there a couple of times before, but never the ceiling. I decided to change that this time and give the ceiling a nice fresh coat of pink paint. But first, I had to prepare the surface, and that meant scraping off the seemingly thousands of glow in the dark stars we had stuck up there several years ago.

* Bowman actually says, “The thing’s hollow ? it goes on forever ? and ? oh my God! ? It’s full of stars!”, but not in the movie 2001, its in the novel by Arthur C. Clarke and does make it into 2010, the sequel.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 248

Serenity

Along with our Netflix membership, we are also members of a couple Movie Gallery video stores here in town, due mostly to our TDTVS addiction. Every once in a while one of them will call us and leave a message on our phone answering machine to say they haven’t seen us in a while and to bring us back we are entitled to a free movie rental. We got one of those calls on Thursday. A while? Ha! The last time we were in any of their stores was when Season 3 of Lost was released or the last time they offered a free rental.

Having just finished re watching the Firefly DVDs on Friday we decided to see if we could get the Firefly based movie Serenity as our freebie. Luck was with us as Movie Gallery had a copy on the shelf, so today we had “Lunch and a Movie.”

Well, both the Mrs and I love Firefly, but were disappointed with the movie — there goes our nominations for the Browncoat Hall of Fame… Part of the appeal of the show was the character interaction among the crew with the plot of each episode serving as a vehicle to move the developing relationships along. The movie, as I explained to someone (Hi Rae), was too movie-ish. Everything had to be bigger, faster, more and it was jarring. On TV they used what they called the mule, basically a tarted up ATV, to get around planetside. For the movie they had some sort of hovercraft with giant jet engines and seated four comfortably. Why? During the run of the show when ever there was encounter with another spaceship it was always just one, for the movie they pulled a George Lucas – Industrial Light & Magic with a final battle consisting of hundreds of vessels crisscrossing and dodging and weaving. Why, when a dozen would have done the trick? There were several other instances with over the top gun battles, hero vs bad guy one on one epic hand to hand battle on the edge of a precipitous drop and and some sappy feel good Hollywood romancing.

Fortunately the movie, when it was released in 2005, didn’t make a lot of money (according to IMDB it almost made back it’s $40 million budget), so they didn’t make any sequels. Unfortunately, it didn’t make enough at the box office to revive the TV series.

Started down, went up, still up.
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