I've just stumbled onto a Google page translating some archive pages of my blog into French which I'm sure would be even funnier if I could speak French. I remember a tiny bit of French from a class I had in 8th grade. That's not really enough to do anything with. But I have enough experience with translators to recognize that some of the Blog seems to translate okay while certain passages are totally screwed. For instance, sometimes but not every time a phrase in all caps won't be translated, as in one paragraph where the phrase "STUCK IN MY HEAD" is left in English while the translator attempted to translate a similarly capitalized block of lyrics from "Fingertips 4". And occasionally when I use proper names of things the translator gets that and doesn't translate it but this:
THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT DOCTOR WHO AND SCOTSMEN AND PeTA AND IT WAS AWESOME!
Somehow became this:
Il y avait quelque chose PROPOS DE MEDECIN ET écossais ET péta et IT WAS AWESOME!
Possibly the most amusing element of this is it looks like the person who looked at this translation was looking for a translation for the word "funkiloma", which is a word I believe I made up. It is a portmanteau (not a piece of luggage) of "funk" and "papilloma". So yeah.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Lamp Fancy
I bought a new lava lamp. I'm currently afraid to look away too long because I don't want to miss when it throws its first good bubble. The wax has softened and rounded and now it's just a matter of time until it finally blurps up a good bubble. It's thrown up a little trapped oxygen and some lint and dust and crap but no bubbles yet.
Since Thursday it has become a running gag in my family that I am somehow obsessed with lamps. Thursday afternoon I went over to the mall and watched a movie and afterward I stopped in at the dollar store where I found a bin of tacky little lampshades. I looked at a few and wondered what sort of lamp they were supposed to fit on and where I was supposed to find such a lamp, then I noticed that one foot above that bin was a shelf (pretty much at eye level) with little lamps shaped like candles, and if that wasn't clear enough, they'd pulled one out of its box and stuck one of the lampshades on it. Now I'm a packrat, I hoard things, especially tacky cheap weird stuff, and I've been passively looking for a lamp for a while now because the overhead light in my room is too bright and I need some more mellow lighting; but having had no money to speak of for several years now I haven't been able to get one. That situation recently rectified (I'm still poor but I have an actual income, and ironically all the employed people I know have been laid off) and faced with the prospect of a tacky lamp for two dollars and change I selected two shades and grabbed two lamps.
Oh neat I can see the filament of the lightbulb inside my lava lamp reflected in the ball of wax, which has still not thrown a bubble.
My purchasing two lamps for some reason befuddled my family, who found this somehow especially strange despite my wide range of eccentricities. After struggling with their overly short cords and lack of on/off switches I eventually dug out a multitap extension cord I had and bought a special switch you plug into the outlet then plug a cord into the switch (I sit next to the outlet, so it's easy to get at). I set them up on top of my upper keyboard (I recently set my two keyboards up one on top of the other to play them both at once) at either end.
Another item I've been sorely lacking for several years now is a lava lamp. My old one had orange wax that was permanently soft so the lamp didn't have to get very hot to get going, and one day when I still lived in my old room at home (where I now live again) it fell from its place on top of a dresser and shattered on the carpet, leaving an indelible stain which took many cleanings to even start to fade. Not only that it splattered all over my old keyboard (which I still have which is now the keyboard my lamps are sitting on), which I've never taken the time to clean properly, so there's still gunk and oil on and in various parts of it and several buttons stick.
Today I happened to be in Target and I found a (fairly small) lava lamp for ten bucks with purple fluid and orange wax, in my eyes the best color this particular brand comes in (though the clear fluid/black wax combo is intriguing), so finally I could replace my shattered orange mess of a lamp.
Tonight just before starting this entry I plugged in and set up the new lamp in-between the two dollar store lamps on my keyboard, tempting fate as this is the same keyboard that was befouled by my last lava lamp. I'm still waiting for it to throw a bubble but the wax is really getting riled up by now so I expect it shortly.
Since Thursday it has become a running gag in my family that I am somehow obsessed with lamps. Thursday afternoon I went over to the mall and watched a movie and afterward I stopped in at the dollar store where I found a bin of tacky little lampshades. I looked at a few and wondered what sort of lamp they were supposed to fit on and where I was supposed to find such a lamp, then I noticed that one foot above that bin was a shelf (pretty much at eye level) with little lamps shaped like candles, and if that wasn't clear enough, they'd pulled one out of its box and stuck one of the lampshades on it. Now I'm a packrat, I hoard things, especially tacky cheap weird stuff, and I've been passively looking for a lamp for a while now because the overhead light in my room is too bright and I need some more mellow lighting; but having had no money to speak of for several years now I haven't been able to get one. That situation recently rectified (I'm still poor but I have an actual income, and ironically all the employed people I know have been laid off) and faced with the prospect of a tacky lamp for two dollars and change I selected two shades and grabbed two lamps.
Oh neat I can see the filament of the lightbulb inside my lava lamp reflected in the ball of wax, which has still not thrown a bubble.
My purchasing two lamps for some reason befuddled my family, who found this somehow especially strange despite my wide range of eccentricities. After struggling with their overly short cords and lack of on/off switches I eventually dug out a multitap extension cord I had and bought a special switch you plug into the outlet then plug a cord into the switch (I sit next to the outlet, so it's easy to get at). I set them up on top of my upper keyboard (I recently set my two keyboards up one on top of the other to play them both at once) at either end.
Another item I've been sorely lacking for several years now is a lava lamp. My old one had orange wax that was permanently soft so the lamp didn't have to get very hot to get going, and one day when I still lived in my old room at home (where I now live again) it fell from its place on top of a dresser and shattered on the carpet, leaving an indelible stain which took many cleanings to even start to fade. Not only that it splattered all over my old keyboard (which I still have which is now the keyboard my lamps are sitting on), which I've never taken the time to clean properly, so there's still gunk and oil on and in various parts of it and several buttons stick.
Today I happened to be in Target and I found a (fairly small) lava lamp for ten bucks with purple fluid and orange wax, in my eyes the best color this particular brand comes in (though the clear fluid/black wax combo is intriguing), so finally I could replace my shattered orange mess of a lamp.
Tonight just before starting this entry I plugged in and set up the new lamp in-between the two dollar store lamps on my keyboard, tempting fate as this is the same keyboard that was befouled by my last lava lamp. I'm still waiting for it to throw a bubble but the wax is really getting riled up by now so I expect it shortly.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
No I Didn't See "The Lake House"
Whoa...that was freaky!
LISTEN: I'm watching Family Guy now on Adult Swim, and it's "Stewie Kills Lois" (which I hate when they show without "Lois Kills Stewie", the second half of the story. These are reruns people, reruns shouldn't have cliffhangers. Although I do love the use of the TNG credit font on the "To Be Continued" card. And I believe Majel Barrett does the voice-over for the "previously" montage on the second half. How could anyone not appreciate this show?).
ANYWAY! There's a cutaway gag about the movie The Lake House, which if you don't remember it was a romantic drama with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock which centered around a magic time portal mailbox. Needless to say I never watched it, but I'm always curious about stories with time paradoxes as an old sci-fi junkie and the cutaway gag reminded me that I'd wanted to look up the plot on Wikipedia to see if they did anything unexpected with it. Of course they did not, the plot unfolded itself in all the predictable ways, ending with the obligatory paradox of Sandra Bullock preventing the inciting incident and then the universe exploded (but not really)! You know another stupid movie with similar annoying time-communication logical errors? Frequency. Seriously, The Lake House looks horrible but I bet compared to Frequency it's Citizen Kane. (Guys I didn't want to use the old "Citizen Kane" cliche but I couldn't think of another movie which really fits. I mean come on it's Citizen Kane maybe you prefer White Chicks or Big Momma's House 2 for entertainment but Citizen Kane is the epitomal example of the craft of filmmaking!)
Anyway like most Wikipedia articles on bad movies and things the thinly veiled "trivia" section was the most amusing, several people had just the right combination of nerdish nitpickery and crappy taste that several people attempted to either attack the film for logical inconsistencies or defend the same inconsistencies. I saw one that bothered me, a person (who cited as his reference a physics book) with an insistence that "[e]ven in the case of parallel time lines, [...] it is an established fact that these must eventually meet if they are to be parallel in the first place (although higher entropy results in more information, not less)." Excuse me? Not that I quite know what any of that means (I was always a little fuzzy on entropy) but wouldn't we have to be able to travel through time in order for anything involved with temporal theory to be an "established fact"? Is Doc Brown editing on Wikipedia? Shouldn't he be busy calibrating his flux capacitor?
So, as I often do, I went to the discussion page to see if anyone else had been bothered by this entry and perhaps questioned it. And here's where the freaky stuff happens: Family Guy is on in the background, Peter's trial is starting and Bruce the Performance Artist (Peter's lawyer) stands to give his opening statement. At the EXACT MOMENT Bruce begins it I see on the discussion page a heading using the EXACT SAME WORDS AS BRUCE IS CURRENTLY SAYING: "Today's the big day!"
Coincidence? OF COURSE! A weird one, I admit, and it took me a moment to regain my faculties and figure it out. It happens some weird-ass The Lake House fan went on the discussion page and posted that heading with no message, only the signature and time-stamp for February 14th 2008, which if you've just finished reading a recap of the plot of The Lake House you'll recognize as the (at the time of release still two years off) date upon which the climax of the film takes place. Like Terminator fans who find the need to celebrate the ever changing date of Judgment Day and Trekkies who celebrate Kirk's birthday even though he won't be born for 200 years or so (and also is fictional and so he won't actually ever be born sorry Trek-homies), this person decided to mark the passing of this date in the real world by blowing my mind exactly one year and one day later (as yesterday was February 14th 2009).
BUT WAIT! What if the Wikipedia page for The Lake House is a magical time portal to one year in the past and I can communicate with this user as in the film? I just hope it's not Sandra Bullock or Keanu Reeves. Well at least if it's Keanu I can try to convince him to do a Bill and Ted 3, but only if they get the original writers and Alex Winter on board. Or else they let me write it. My concept: Bill and Ted Run For President! Then they win (Bill as President and Ted as VP) and they have to lead the country in a war against ALIENS! IT FREAKING WRITES ITSELF! KEANU YOU BETTER BE READING THIS SHIT MAN!
LISTEN: I'm watching Family Guy now on Adult Swim, and it's "Stewie Kills Lois" (which I hate when they show without "Lois Kills Stewie", the second half of the story. These are reruns people, reruns shouldn't have cliffhangers. Although I do love the use of the TNG credit font on the "To Be Continued" card. And I believe Majel Barrett does the voice-over for the "previously" montage on the second half. How could anyone not appreciate this show?).
ANYWAY! There's a cutaway gag about the movie The Lake House, which if you don't remember it was a romantic drama with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock which centered around a magic time portal mailbox. Needless to say I never watched it, but I'm always curious about stories with time paradoxes as an old sci-fi junkie and the cutaway gag reminded me that I'd wanted to look up the plot on Wikipedia to see if they did anything unexpected with it. Of course they did not, the plot unfolded itself in all the predictable ways, ending with the obligatory paradox of Sandra Bullock preventing the inciting incident and then the universe exploded (but not really)! You know another stupid movie with similar annoying time-communication logical errors? Frequency. Seriously, The Lake House looks horrible but I bet compared to Frequency it's Citizen Kane. (Guys I didn't want to use the old "Citizen Kane" cliche but I couldn't think of another movie which really fits. I mean come on it's Citizen Kane maybe you prefer White Chicks or Big Momma's House 2 for entertainment but Citizen Kane is the epitomal example of the craft of filmmaking!)
Anyway like most Wikipedia articles on bad movies and things the thinly veiled "trivia" section was the most amusing, several people had just the right combination of nerdish nitpickery and crappy taste that several people attempted to either attack the film for logical inconsistencies or defend the same inconsistencies. I saw one that bothered me, a person (who cited as his reference a physics book) with an insistence that "[e]ven in the case of parallel time lines, [...] it is an established fact that these must eventually meet if they are to be parallel in the first place (although higher entropy results in more information, not less)." Excuse me? Not that I quite know what any of that means (I was always a little fuzzy on entropy) but wouldn't we have to be able to travel through time in order for anything involved with temporal theory to be an "established fact"? Is Doc Brown editing on Wikipedia? Shouldn't he be busy calibrating his flux capacitor?
So, as I often do, I went to the discussion page to see if anyone else had been bothered by this entry and perhaps questioned it. And here's where the freaky stuff happens: Family Guy is on in the background, Peter's trial is starting and Bruce the Performance Artist (Peter's lawyer) stands to give his opening statement. At the EXACT MOMENT Bruce begins it I see on the discussion page a heading using the EXACT SAME WORDS AS BRUCE IS CURRENTLY SAYING: "Today's the big day!"
Coincidence? OF COURSE! A weird one, I admit, and it took me a moment to regain my faculties and figure it out. It happens some weird-ass The Lake House fan went on the discussion page and posted that heading with no message, only the signature and time-stamp for February 14th 2008, which if you've just finished reading a recap of the plot of The Lake House you'll recognize as the (at the time of release still two years off) date upon which the climax of the film takes place. Like Terminator fans who find the need to celebrate the ever changing date of Judgment Day and Trekkies who celebrate Kirk's birthday even though he won't be born for 200 years or so (and also is fictional and so he won't actually ever be born sorry Trek-homies), this person decided to mark the passing of this date in the real world by blowing my mind exactly one year and one day later (as yesterday was February 14th 2009).
BUT WAIT! What if the Wikipedia page for The Lake House is a magical time portal to one year in the past and I can communicate with this user as in the film? I just hope it's not Sandra Bullock or Keanu Reeves. Well at least if it's Keanu I can try to convince him to do a Bill and Ted 3, but only if they get the original writers and Alex Winter on board. Or else they let me write it. My concept: Bill and Ted Run For President! Then they win (Bill as President and Ted as VP) and they have to lead the country in a war against ALIENS! IT FREAKING WRITES ITSELF! KEANU YOU BETTER BE READING THIS SHIT MAN!
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