LongTom

The Heaven's Gate UFO finally made landfall?

Welcome back, John! How was the stress test? We've been worried about you.

Look, by all means do what you see fit. I do wonder, however, that if you don't approve of that sort of thing in real life, why would you fill your kids' imaginations with it? Or, for that matter, your own imagination. There were several "ugh, I really didn't need to see that" moments in AWE, and they were largely gratuitous. Give me Hitchcock's cinematic sensibilities over John Carpenter's, any day. michaelsbagley is right: it was perhaps naive of me to hope that #3 would be less dark than #2. Sequels are always more, bigger, louder, tougher. For some reason I thought just maybe #3 would be a return to the spirit of the first one (think Back to the Future 3). What was I thinking?

Saw it last night. I'm glad I went by myself first. The boys will not be seeing it, not for several years yet. Why is it that witnessing an Oriental prostitute take a bullet to the forehead is acceptable family fare? And yet the expression of love between two of the main characters has be be limited to a symbolic kiss on the knee, an enigmatic smile, and a regretful "gee, gotta go." I'm not saying that blatant sexual imagery is appropriate for yougsters either, but aren't impalings, mass hangings, and other grievous bodily harm far worse? It would only have taken a bit of restraint in perhaps five or six places, and the movie could have received a plain old PG. I liked the wedding scene. That was brash, big-toothy-grin, adventure-movie fun. I liked quite a few other things too, which I don't have time to go into right now. But the wedding scene struck me as being most in line with the spirit of PotC 1.

Hee, hee! Lookit me, I'm a poison tree frog! Okay, okay, those are my new "please don't run me off the road, because you can't possibly claim to not have seen me" bicycling togs. So why am I posting them in this thread? For the first time in my LIFE, that t-shirt is a MEDIUM, not a large. And for the first time, my belly is not wider than my ribcage. I haven't ditched the spare tire completely yet (yes, I am sucking in the gut in the photo below, a little bit) but I can almost claim to look fit. No, you may not see the "before" pictures. A poison tree frog has to preserve a sense of dignity, after all... p.s. oh, right. checkin time. I did all three weight workouts this week. Thank you everyone particpating here, for keeping me motivated.

Patrick, you're evil. But then we already knew that ... Let's see... the Inquisition ... the Black Plague ... Patrick already mentioned the French Revolution ... the Aztecs ... what the Spaniards did to the Aztecs ("..it's a small pox after allllll...") I don't know, though; anything after 1900 or so would be in really, really bad taste.

Yeah, the difference between laughter and slaughter is more of a visual pun than an auditory one. Too bad. "It's a world of slaughter, a world of fears, A world of fears and a world of fears, There's so much that we're scared of, It's time we beware, It's a Skull World after all..." (c'mon everybody, scream with me!) It would be funny to decorate the skulls in all the different cultural styles you can come up with. Mexican Day of the Dead would be instantly recognizable. What other cultures have distinctive skeleton art? Either that, or do a straight up reproduction of "It's A Small World", and introduce it as the circle of Hell reserved for the worst of the worst. Push them forward into the room, turn on the lights and music, and slam the door. Voice-over: "Welcome to eternity. Make yourselves comfortable..... muahahahaha...." We keep this up, and they're going to chase us off to HauntForum.

And here I thought Elvira Montoya was an aberration.

What, no force-feedback lightsaber-styled v(moderated)r?

"It's a world of (s)laughter, a world of tears,"

How about "going to wait for the format wars to settle down before committing a lot of money" ...? (Anyone want to guess how many years before someone starts mass-producing a universal drive -- CD-R/RW/everything, DVD-R/+R/everything, BluRay/HD-DVD/everything -- for 50 bucks?)

stashed the corpse of...

Me? Artie Johnson. (what is the tall ship equivalent of a tricycle, and how do you tip it over?)

Weight workout last night. Tetanus shot today (unrelated, but the nurse warned the muscles may be cranky for couple of days; I'll try to not let it interfere with the next workout). My blood pressure is back down to nominal levels, too!

I guess that's incentive to go for the the N.C. Wyeth "Treasure Island" type of pyrate impression.

Just finished my weight routine. Second one this week. I really should be doing four, three at the very least. The scale actually read 184 this morning, for what that's worth (not much). Biking 5 miles and walking 1-3/4 miles 5 days a week isn't currently making the difference. Hopefully getting the lifting back into the mix will fix that.

while he plundered their

Nicely accessorized too! I'll take the accessory on the left, in green. I like the hat. Obviously we need to form the LOGOFWETWGB (League of Gentlemen of Fortune Wearing Enormous Tricorns with Gold Braid).

^ A brigantine. (You did say "any.") Okay, no: a cutlass. < A better waistcoat would be a good idea, too. One that actually meets in the middle. (Object lesson: Don't drink and sew.) V Can you do your own tailoring?

That and all the old ballads. "Lily white skin" is the phrase that comes to mind for all the heroines. I've been stuck at 185 for nearly a month now. I think I must have slowed down my metabolism. Drat. I'm eating the same as I did previously, but the weight is staying put. (Okay, so I did slack off the weight workouts, but I can't believe those were using that many more calories. I guess I should stop whining and start lifting.)

Must not have been a baby shower. Baby showers are painful. And the babies clog up the drain something awful!

Well, there is something to be said for having practically the entire nursery delivered to your doorstep. Shopping for all that stuff can be kind of hard on the feet when you're in that condition. (Wedding showers, on the other hand... see previous comment.)

^ Raw oyster. (Unless, maybe, a big floppy pencil eraser. No wait: that was the oyster.) < Never eat too much watermelon. Ouch. V Passing the question. (no, not like that!)

high limit credit card

We seem to be drifting a bit. To return to our original topic: Hey, it was short notice. At least the buttons all got sewed on in time.