Caraccioli

Is that a guess or a comment? It was a very popular movie amongst a certain crowd in the 80s.

I would never have seen Love Story had it not been for Mad Magazine. "Sa dozo. Nan-ni shimasho-ka?" "Give me four." "Futatsu de jubun desuyo." "No, four. Two, two, four." "Futatsu de jubun desuyo." "And noodles." "Wakatte kudasai yo." "Sushi, that's what my ex-wife called me. Cold fish."

Ooh, ooh! This is a bit of wild guess (it's been eons since I've seen it - at least 20 eons, I think), but is it Love Story?

Speaking of recent movies... (Maybe we should call this the recent movie thread.) I saw Kong this weekend. It was...long. Too long, really. But they had to cover all the ground, I suppose. They could have ended the thing after Kong beat the T-Rexs and I'd have been happy (and my companions' bladders would have been happy. Buying a soda going into a three hour movie! I mean, really...) Nice digital effects for the most part. Some of what happened was rather improbable and sort of stupid (running between the legs of stampeding dinos, picking giant bugs off a guy with a shaky machine gun, people constantly showing up at exactly the right moment to save select characters, etc.) ...but that seems to be a factor in modern action movies today. I really liked the character of the SS Venture's captain. (Did you know the ship that brought the T-Rex back in JPII was also called the SS Venture? Not only did they steal the idea, they stole the boat!) Overall, it was worth watching. I'd catch it on the big screen if you like this sort of thing. Lots of big things going on. (Heh.)

So... did anyone get it? In my 8 different email accounts, I never saw hide nor hair of this.

You might also toddle over to the Beyond Pyracy forum and check out our pyracy.com map thread. At the very least you can see who you might be near from the forum.

Only a moderator can make something sticky. I was asked to sticky this post and it seemed like a good post to sticky, so I did. I have been sorely tempted to take it down for a spell, if only so it gets into the mix and doesn't get ignored by regular visitors. (Sticky notes have a tendency to be relegated to the mental background and wind up getting ignored.) Here, here! I have noted this elsewhere before but it bears repeating here. Thanks for covering this point, Lady Seahawk. Pictures and zip codes are probably not too dangerous unless you're in a very small town...but if you put your surname on the board anywhere and your zip code on that map - it may not be too difficult to piece things together. Someone would have to be pretty dedicated to the task, though. Still, better safe than sorry. Oh, and since it doesn't appear yet on this page: http://www.frappr.com/pyracypub

Yes. Your turn.

Hmm. How about a hint. The person to whom this dialogue is directed at is part of a gang planning to rob the bank (this dialogue takes place in a bank - free hint). However, through a weird series of events, the person speaking actually robs the bank before the gang can break in. How's that for a convoluted hint?

Yeah. Me too. Althought I have some 15 year old Aberlour I'll be nursing at the NYE soiree I plan to duck out of after an hour or two of conviviality.

15 Hours?! Oh, the things I could do with 15 hours... I've no doubt I'd like them. I will consider your recommendation with all due seriousness. I did not see the outtakes. It was my brother-in-law's movie and he took it with him. I was watching Shanolin Soccer (an excellent Chinese kung fu comedy) and they had outtakes at the end of it. Unfortunately none of them were translated, so we had no idea what was going on most of the time...although we laughed like hell anyway. Must have been the wine.

You know, as someone who has collected absolute reams of crap (from stamps to coins to model trains to action figures to accolades to movie memorabelia to books to...well, you get the point), I must say that I have lately come to the conclusion that I really wouldn't miss most of it all that deeply if it were lost (in an equitable way...if it were wasted or ruined in a flood or something, I would be awfully annoyed at that). However, I do have one prize possession: my 15 year old Uncle Zeke prop. "If anything should happen to you I don't know what I would do. I'd probably move on and get another replica but there would be a ten minute period where I would just be inconsolable."

Just so long as you don't put the ice or water in the good 18-year old scotch...that's high treason.

We have cats so we can toughen ourselves up and experience the joys of servitude, indifference and rejection. Also to reduce the number of mice, squirrels, rabbits and, apparently, cave crickets wandering about the land and increase the number of them lying dead on our porch steps as offerings to the gods of cat food. (Cave crickets - you mean those ghostly, spindly white things with no eyes? I always thought they were kind of cool.) I'm told that people get dogs in preparation for having children. (I'm not sure about this one... Is it the copies quanties of slobber?) Dave Barry has them so he can write really funny columns.

I finally saw this. It was pretty good, although I thought some of the acting was a little wobbly for a feature movie. I liked the concept of the movie a great deal. The reavers and the spooky psychic chick were the real hooks for me. (I would never have watched it, though. Drama Series TV...bad addiction.)

That was the first time I had ever heard the word "startlement" used in a sentence. The Coens have an interesting ear for dialogue (not to mention an interesting eye for characters). I second blackjohn! Do what must be done, Patrick! You're really the only one who will do it for you. For myself, I'm re-starting the writing of my success newsletter every month next year. (That will surprise the folks on my email list...) I decided to stop writing it last year and I wish I hadn't. I'm also studying one topic a month to supplement my training information. And several other things. (Hint: Write your goals out longhand. You're much more likely to achieve something you've written - not typed - written.)

Odd that you would choose to post this on the internet. On the plus side (maybe), we are closer to being able to have a true democracy (as opposed to the representitive republic we currently have) where everyone could vote on every issue that comes up before the body politic. Imagine the chaos... Isn't there a bit in one of Douglas Adam's novels about a planet where everyone was cursed with the ability to read each other's minds so that they had to spend all day chattering inanely about news, the weather and sports to avoid hearing what other people were thinking about because it was so dull?

Lucky boy. I'd like to have that...

I was giving myself mental presence.

When I was a kid I gave my father a tusken raider figure. He didn't really enjoy that. I got an iPod, an FM transmitter for it and a Darth Vader head toilet brush thing that I don't quite know what to do with. (My sister made it using a cookie jar.)

Ok, he's five and isn't actually going to write anything without the aid of lined paper - but he's up from Atlanta and staying for the week. This morning he came to me and explained (quite patiently) (for him) that he had a big problem that only I could help him with. I thought, "How big can the problems of a five year old - particularly this five year old - be?" So I asked him and he told me that he wanted me to print out pictures of Star Wars for him. I was confused. "For what?" I asked as I put on my socks. "To color in!" Ah, now the coloring books are free on the internet. When I was a kid, you had to go to the store and buy them - and they were printed on that heavy, awfully cheap grayish paper. You can talk about e-commerce, political blogs and Wikipedia, but for 5 year olds, the internet has revolutionized coloring books. (Plus it's a cheap way to keep him out of my hair while I work on an Autocad Drawing.)

No, that was from Real Genius. Val Kilmer looked so young then... "Now, how about that account? We have savings, checking, savings and checking, CDs, savings and CDs, checking and CDs, savings, checking, and CDs, T-bills, or we can just take all your money and throw it in a big mattress back there."

"Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?) And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer." -John R. Searle Apparently, I've succumbed to this tendency in this post. It must be an amazing bit of wizardry, our mind.

It may well seem massively cynical of me, but it would seem to me that the people who live that way are very few and far between. (In truth, I don't know of any.) I agree with Jill...one can't function well in a constant state of infatuation. Most successful relationships mature into learning, shared growth, companion- and partnership. To be honest, I think those are the most beautiful aspects of a relationship.