13 February 2010

weekend whimsy, pontification with pictures!


When I last posted, I mused about the coming snowpocalypse that was about the descend on Virginia. Due to the massive amount of snow that eventually came, in two parts no less, I found myself without the right schedule to maintain blogitude. Consider this a Tuesday Museday on a snow induced two-hour delay of sorts.

Being snowed in for a week and a half gives one lots of time for a) doing leisurely indoor things, and b) forming opinions on said leisures and other matters of the day. I will share accordingly.


SNOW DAYS out the wazoo! Six-point-five (6.5) consecutive days out from school! That is fucking wild! Not since the halcyon days of junior year of high school have we seen such an ourpouring of love from local school superintendents. While I thoroughly enjoyed the first couple off from work, towards the end of the week I was beginning to feel quite shiftless what with the hours on end of playing FIFA (more on this later) and the waking up at all hours of the later morning. When the only thing you have getting you up in the morning is the prospect of catching your favorite morning radio show, you are kind of trifling.

The picture at right is an illustration of why school was canceled for the whole week in many parts of Northern Virginia. Beyond that pink line is Arlington County. Note the clean and navigable nature of the road in the distance. Then look to the foreground. That same road is on the Fairfax County side of the line. Note how the asphalt is barely visible. Now imagine the Fairfax County road, with about an inch more of frozen water stuff and more mud, and that was the condition of the roads where I live. Localities shitting the bed all over the place in terms of road clearance. Except for Arlington, which I have long contended is one of the finest counties in the Old Dominion. All bow to the emancipated Virginia portion of the District of Columbia!

I GROK this book is a very worthwhile read. I thoroughly enjoyed Stranger in a Strange Land, a book that I had never heard of nor knew anything about before a friend recommended it to me a couple months ago. I am ashamed that I, a nerd, did not know of such an epic Sci Fi book. I could have read well beyond the 360+ pages that Heinlein provides: I eagerly devoured the book in a matter of days and at the end was left wanting more of the story. Perhaps one of the more interesting parts of the book was trying to understand the projection for the state of technology from Heinlein's 1960s perspective. Apparently newspapers are still extant in the space-traveling future, and grass is considered a premium rug. Who knew?







I GOT INTO weeds over this little impromptu winter break. While it wasn't ont hte top of my queue of must see shows (It's Always Sunny and Arrested Development, I promise to get to thee!), it was on Netflix instant streaming, so I blazed (no pun intended) through the first two seasons. While I found the show generally enjoyable, what with the milk-white attractiveness of Mary-Louise Parker (see left) and the occasional sex scene, I found myself growing tired of the predictable actions of the characters at times. Silas can be counted on to be ever the teenage douche, the little kid is unfailingly freakish, and the brother-in-law is almost too ridiculous to be believed. Another thing that annoys me is how each episode in the second season has its own version of the intro song. I am really not sure what to make of that from a stylistic aspect, since no really awesome shows that I have ever followed have done such a thing. Kevin Nolan is perfectly cast in his role, though, and somehow his ludicrous character is one of the more believable and likeable of the bunch.



NO CREDIT TO NBC's coverage of the Vancouver Games, right from the start. We aren't going to talk about the hundreds of millions that the family of networks is going to lose on the broadcast of these games, that displayed some small measure of bad judgement on the part of the bigwigs at NBC. What was truly horrid, though, was their repeated airing of the tragic luge accident that claimed the life of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. The violent high speed crash was shown numerous times during the coverage in the lead-up to the opening ceremonies. I really don't understand their thought process in green-lighting this video for a news/sports broadcast that many families would be watching. In the scheme of terrible things that TV/Internet has brought me in the way of shocking videos, this wasn't so bad, but the fact that there were probably little kids that were tuned in makes their decision to air quite disappointing. Also, no credit to HuffPo for posting some really horrid pictures of the accident scene. Nothing like scrolling through a page to find some pics of a guy losing his life. Thanks Arianna!


FIFA FAILS ME in a major, major way. Over the break I had made quite a bit of progress in my manager mode; Zinedine Zidane had lead Madrid to it second consecutive Treble and everything seemed fine and dandy. I had big plans going into my 4th season. BIG PLANS. But these, alas, went up in smoke when I loaded up my save file to find that from the very start of sesaon 4, my team was 2.14 BILLION dollars in DEBT. I had not bought any ridiculously expensive players (rare for Madrid, I know), nor had I splashed out on any upgrades (my staff were all already at level 10). Perplexed, I turned to Google for answers. To my simultaneous comfort and dismay I found that a) I was not alone, that this is a common glitch, but b) there is no fix for this problem. Sigh. There goes 3 months of gaming out the window. Thanks EA!


DOMINO'S "NEW" PIZZA blows. The sauce is the same, the cheese hasn't changed, and the only noticable difference - the crust - is a terrible abomination. In their attempt to add flavor to their already decent recipe, the geniuses at Domino's decided to load up the crust with obscene amounts of garlic. While there is a good amount of taste added, makes the pizza super-rich, and thus each small sized piece becomes kind of like superdense pizza matter in your stomach. Not pleasant. The load of garlic also makes the boxes something akin to radioactively smelly, in that they cannot be kept in a closed space unless one wants to create a vampire-proof panic room. Please go back to unoffensive, normal-flavored filler pizza, Domino's. Please and thank you!

Alright, there are more Events to be watched tonight, enough with this bloggery for the evening. Back later with some movie thoughts.