Caraccioli

So I take it you don't know the answer... Me? Out of line? "You got out of line, you got whacked. Everybody knew the rules. But sometimes even if people didn't get out of line, they got whacked. I mean, hits just became a habit for some of the guys. Guys would get into an arguments over nothing, and before you knew it, one of them was dead." (Goodfellas) How about this...if you no one responds to a quote and you don't at least make some kind of half-as...hearted effort to do something about it, you lose your turn. One of my fave posts has gone almost two months without a reply! Alas...the philosophy thread is dead. "Dead, dead, deadski..." (Beetlejuice)

Huh. I failed to find a time travel discussion in here as well. I know we were talking about it awhile back. *Sigh* Must be gone... I should add Slackers to my list.

I was just searching this topic for time travel, since I know we were discussing it a year or to ago and I couldn't find it. I did discover just how many times the word "time" comes up in the thread, however. (And now I've added three more times. Four.) I know we were discussing it somewhere, but I can't remember where. Maybe it got deleted. I was going to spout off about the illogical time (five) travel elements in the movie Primer. Alas. It seems a shame to let it die, especially after spending so much time (six) searching it. So here's a quote, that's old, but should be sort of easy for anyone who wants to keep the topic alive...(Bonus if you can name the actor/actress who said this famous line.) "I always get the fuzzy end of the lollypop."

Note to everyone: the money you donate appears to be tax deductible. (So, if you needed further incentive, that might help.) Good luck to the Royaliste and the two owners' dreams.

You know, I believe in the value of voting, but the choices we have...pah. I once did a paper on the two-party system and the flaws entailed and...well...I just don't see it changing. Even with a pirate party. (Nice bit of civics there...it all sounded vaguely libertarian - which would be appropriate to the party name I guess. Not enough info on his site though. I suppose it will grow with time. The devil with any political party is in the details. Oh, those details... )

I wonder what he'd come after her for? I don't know what Chinese models are paid, but if it's like every other career in China... Hopefully Silkie is right and the thing was insured. I wonder how they made mirrors 2500 years ago? I better go home and look it up... "From Encyclopedia Britanica: The typical mirror is a sheet of glass that is coated on its back with aluminum or silver that produces images by reflection. The mirrors used in Greco-Roman antiquity and throughout the European Middle Ages were simply slightly convex disks of metal, either bronze, tin, or silver, that reflected light off their highly polished surfaces. A method of backing a plate of flat glass with a thin sheet of reflecting metal came into widespread production in Venice during the 16th century; an amalgam of tin and mercury was the metal used. The chemical process of coating a glass surface with metallic silver was discovered by Justus von Liebig in 1835, and this advance inaugurated the modern techniques of mirror making." (from A Brief History of Mirrors)

The really cool thing about this story is that is true. (A lot of these email stories are completely fabricated, but I verified this one a few years ago.)

I saw this and thought some of it was pretty funny. Wired magazine asked a bunch of sci-fi writers to write a six word story. My favorite? "The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly." - Orson Scott Card You can see them all here: Wired 6 Word Sci-Fi.

Thanks! I'm thinking about putting together a quick reference page naming all the accessories I used. I'm not saying they're ideal for this sort of project, but, like that lightsaber light, some people may like them enough to want to know how to get them. Sure, yeah, post links to my site anywhere you like. What's a vanity web site for, if not vanity? (Actually, I often use it to explain the stuff I'm creating to people. Telling someone about your idea is one thing. Showing them is another. Like the Delorean-inspired kitchen cabinets I'm building...guess what the kitchen's theme is? ) Do me a favor though and send me a link to your post. That way I can see all the praise and all the nitpicking.

No...there, it's fixed. Sorry about that. Web pages...who ever finishes them?

At last it's finished! My bit for the 30th SW Celebration: my Star Wars themed bathroom. Ok, it really didn't have anything whatsoever to do with the 30th SW Celebration, but it makes this fit the topic. So there.) For those of you who don't know, my whole house is one big expressionist art project devoted to my past. Each room is (or is going to be) themed to represent something that was important to me in the past. One of those things was Star Wars. I sort of hang around on the fringes of the thing now without being too involved, but when I was 11 (and 12 and 13 and 14...) I was a huge fan. So it had to be represented somewhere in my expressionist art project. (The pirate themed room was another one. More about that when it's ready...) Anyhow, you can view it here if you're curious. I ended up making up several things in there myself. (Hint: Don't ever attempt to make your own bathroom mirror/medicine cabinet. It will cost you 4x the going rate at Lowes. )

I was looking for the old "weather" topic so I could combine it and I discovered that you started that one too, Silent! Did you forget about it? I'm going to combine them. I'm one of those mods that generally likes to have topics in one place if it makes sense. (Plus, if we don't revive the old topics, the powers-that-be delete all the older threads on occasion to save on memory. So I like to revive some of them to save them in the face of danger and almost certain death. )

Time for an update! (And a topic boost...) First, we have Eugene the Jeep, who is a 4th dimensional creature that solves problems and always tells the truth: And then there was Pan, the mischievous boy who never wanted to grow up: And just today, I switched to Koehler. (I used this photo because I couldn't find an undead shot of him. Maybe I'll rip one off the DVD and change the shot.)

I'm not sure what my avatar takes care of...say, that reminds me...

Makes sense to me. If people want their sex publicly known, they can always post a personal photo. Relative anonymity: another service provided by the internet.

I just saw this last night and...well, it was pretty dopey. It was fun on a "9 year old boy" level, but beyond that...I couldn't quite stomach it. There was a guy with a red eye patch. ! I mean...! And the costuming sort of went down hill from there. Accuracy was clearly not the goal in ANY of the costuming - pirates and soldiers alike. (Unless there was a version of British soldier uniform from the era of which I wasn't aware.) And while Lancaster's mute buddy did a great job of channeling Harpo (and sort of prefiguring Abu the Monkey), he just didn't quite fit. Plus Lancaster...boy does he overact. The girl and the villain were a bit more watchable at least. The (justifiably, if you ask me) mutinous pirate who took over the ship was also reasonably well done, if a tad comically dressed. Oh, and there's a scene where they flip the boat over and walk along the bottom breathing the air in the overturned boat. I don't know if that was the inspiration for POTC:COTBP, but it was realllllll similar. Not a great pirate movie for me...but I saw it on the shelf and though it was time to update my pirate movie knowledge. I'll have to add The Black Pirate to my Netflix list if they have it.

Patrick - I know we've never met or anything, but from reading your posts and seing the photos you post I guess I've formed a mental picture of you. Anyhow, every time I hear Travis Tritt's "It's a Great Day to Be Alive" I think of you for some reason. (Note: that's meant as a compliment. If you hate country music, sorry about that. While I listen mostly to sountracks, I'm sort of a musical omnivore otherwise; modern country is nearly indiscernable from modern rock to me.)

Jurgens was sort of interesting as Stromburg in The Spy Who Loved Me. That reminds me of another cool character actor: Julian Glover - he played General Veers in SW:TESB and Kristatos in For Your Eyes Only. I can't say he was the best Bond villain, but he was likable. I also just discovered that he was the voice of Aragog in Harry Potter, The Chamber of Secrets. Huh.

I love that caboose shot. Great stuff!

Pickles is a great name for a cat, although I'm not sure why.

Ah, it's not so dark and it doesn't have to be murky. When you get down there, you sometimes forget where you are entirely. You should really try diving; with your interests it would probably be doubly interesting.

The track Jack Sparrow continues to top my iPod's Top 25 list, so I guess i like it. (Wheel of Fortune has long since been evicted however.) I was listening to it today and it occurred to me that it would make a fine soundtrack for a roller coaster designed specifically to take advantage of the changes in tempo. (Slow tempo - climbing hills to the mechanical clank-clank-clank. Fast tempo - going down the back side of the hill, through loop-the-loops, sudden turns and into tunnels.) Listen to it sometime and think about how well it would work if the music were in the roller coaster cars, timed to the ups and downs of the coaster.

I've posted this here before (but it's been deleted since then), but I took a series of photos in the Metro Park a year or two ago during the spring thaw. You can see them all here: http://www.markck.com/images/mpwalk/mpwalk.htm

He had a pretty good part in JPII:The Lost World. Postlethwaite was great as the slimy Obadiah Hakeswill in the Sharpe's movies. (Blackjohn, if you haven't seen the Sharpe's movies, you're really doing yourself a disservice. You'd love 'em.)

You take the darnedest pictures, William.