in other news

2003.02.02
I don't mean to discount the loss our nation feels, but man, the media is back in no-news-news-mode:
"This just in--Space Shuttle still destroyed!"
"Breaking news--a lot of people are greatly saddened, and saying so!"
"Newsflash! Those astronauts were brave and will be missed."
This is going to be a long, slow investigation. Definite answers aren't going to come quickly or easily. If we don't get back to our regularly scheduled programming, the unknown structural damage and hitting the atmosphere at 18 times the speed of sound will have won...

I guess it won't last though. Bush'll push this to the backburner as soon as he thinks he can get away with it to make way for his big (war) drum solo.

I guess the tragedy has kind of pushed Groundhog's Day to the backburner. No front page coverage of Punxsutawney Phil today. (More winter...not surprised, given the slush I was shovelling this morning.)

Oh, and Dylan of the Sidebar has decided to pick on my putting the punctuation outside the quotation marks yesterday. Yes, it's true I adhere to the UK standard rather than the US standard in this matter, mostly because it makes sense to my programmer side. What's inside the marks should be what's quoted. Letting the punctuation drift inside just because it looks better, even though it's not what's being quoted, rubs me the wrong way.


Inappropriate Funny of the Moment
"I have to admit I get a little angry when I read about the starving family consisting of a mother, father, and TWENTY-THREE children.
For Christ's sake, lady! It's a vagina, not a clown car!"
Dennis Miller.
A funny line, though it lacks the grace of Groucho's supposed response to a lady in a similar situation who said "Well, because I love my children and I think that's our purpose here on Earth, and I love my husband."
"I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while."
More information on that at snopes urban legends site. Also, an even less raunchy and more versatile response that was definitely on the air:
"Well, I like pancakes, but I haven't got closetsful of them..."


Adult Link of the Moment
As long as I'm already out of due-respect mode, I might as well go for broke. It's IMDb's raunchy cousin: the Celebrity Nudity Database. On the one hand, it has the rather depressing tendency to think of all movies on a single scale: "how much celebrity skin is there?" -- and the comments reflect this. On the other hand...well, I've always finding the occasional sex scene in normal movies as opposed to just watching porn. Somehow seeing sex as a facet of a fully realized character captures my interest more than "I've come to fix the sink" "Ooh I'll show you where you can lay your pipe" wawow-chikka-wow-wow...it's probably akin to me preferring women in tanktops and jeans than in fancy lingerie.

Come to think of it, the comments are pretty amusing "This was a horrible movie to sit through for nudity." "I've seen her breasts so many times on film I feel like I've slept with her." "It's obvious who her fans are, but jeezus folks, let's be real. Here we rate the quality of the NUDITY (of which there is none), so as to not lead people into thinking there is more than exists. This scene barely deserves one star, just because of the major hard nip action"

It's like that guy in "Throw Momma From The Train" who's writing a book "100 Women I'd Like To Pork".