As we we have been owned by some westcostian's for a bit we are celebrating our second annual bike to work day.  In the great wilderness of the Minnesota office it would make more sense if we had some form of a reasonable bike rack...

Note that keeping our bikes in the unattended lobby seems like a bad idea too as the folks leasing the third floor from us have been involved in a couple incidents of pilfering, damage, and the still hilarious incident when one of them managed to get on to our floor(s) and spent time going from room to room scrawling gang signs on the dry erase boards.

Either way I'm likely not participating.  It's a LONG winding ways for me and I don't think I'm in much shape for that ride.  I wish I lived closer because biking to work would be kick ass on most days I think.  When looking for a new house last time I spent hours trying to find a good place nearer work, but no luck :(

Stories from Work: OMG teh Tornado!

I've no basis for this but I think our westcoastian ownership had something to do with the fact that this year we're having a speaker come and talk to us about ... tornadoes.  Some local weather guy.  Seriously, like some elementary school visit with videos and all.  We've been here for ages and not done a think like it.  I'm guessing someone just learned what a tornado is and feels the need to educate us all about the dangers in case something actually happened.  Fortunately the presentation is not mandatory.

Note that the "westcostian" name for our current ownership is not meant to be derogatory.  They are by far our most benevolent owners yet, and while I have limited knowledge of their thought processes they seem downright logical at times.

Vegas

I've never been to Los Vegas.  There was a time when I kinda wanted to go, but it was still far down on my list of places to go.  I don't think I want to go anymore.  How can anyone handle this much marketing, product tie ins, pseudo travel documentaries and etc?   If anything stuff like this make Vegas seem LESS appealing to me, far less.

I'll give them credit for one thing, the marketing is consistent, almost disturbingly so.  All the product, movie, travel TV shows, even some video game tie ins all manage to carry the same exact themes.

Miley Cyrus

I think The Onion pretty well covers this topic.  She's a girl, she's 15.  OMG she might be going thru the natural physical progression of maturing?  Don't let the children know!  I don't care how old the kids she entertains are.  People change as they get older . . . I'm guessing the kids she entertains are somewhat aware of that already.

Having said all that, is that the photo?  Is that all there is?  I'm not even sure that raises ANY issues.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the idiotic conservative ideas about how to raise this nation's kids and other issues isn't inadvertently advanced by a media that is absolutely groping for any kind of controversy no matter how trivial.

MovieTime: The Last Kiss

The Last Kiss hipster late 20s buddies deal with relationships.  I have trouble with any film that makes a real effort at showing real relationships, but still is a heavily hipsterish.  I mean you can have cool music, some dudes who have been friends since elementary school, humor, and all that stuff.  At the same time in The Last Kiss had so much of that it gave overall film a sort of artificial feel IMO.

Anyway the acting was good all around, but Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson just have the ability to dig much deeper than I think the younger actors.  When you talk about the relationships in the film in they're the actors who manage to throw down the acting hammer.  The younger folks do a lot more screaming, almost too much.  As a lot of reviewers said it was nice to see there were no easy outs for any of the characters.

Still it was a noble effort and a good film.  I give it 2 out of 3.14.

Note that on the DVD there are two HORRENDOUS alternate endings.  By HORRENDOUS I mean if they had included that as an ending I would have hated the film.  They have to be joke endings right?  right?  Dear lord...

Also one sort of disconnect in the film got to me.  Kinda a spoiler, not ending spoiler but a spoiler none the less.  One the main character Micheal seeing the college girl goes to a great deal of effort to hide that fact.  Yet at a crucial scene the girl calls him and .... she's apparently programmed into his cellphone.  No way do I buy that.  I know it makes the scene more fluid if it works that way but it seemed unlikely.

Self Destruct

Destruct sequence 1, code 1-1 A.

I know it would be prohibitively expensive and downright silly, but it is NASA right?  You'd think they could at least test the thing live, send up a shuttle with no people and blow it up.  Just once.

It would be best if they tried to get it to look as much like this as possible.

NASA needs some dude in charge of Spectacular PR.  The job wouldn't be to make what NASA does look awesome.  It would be to head up some awesome projects so what NASA does IS awesome, well in a more immediate sense.  I remember when the stuck a camera behind the shuttle to see what the ehaust from their thrusters looked like at a particular angle at a distance.  All we got was some crappy black and white grainy film.  #### that.

Of course they'd still do the science stuff too, and I know there's a big long list of cool achievements and products we use everyday that are tied to NASA projects.  Yay, but NASA needs some other snappier projects too.  All these of course would require some cameras sent along with the main mission to record the awesomeness (duh).  Ideas:

1. Go to the moon.  Detonate a nuclear warhead or two, or three.  AWESOME!
2. Using lots of government money build a fleet of vomit comets and put these expensive bastards out of business so poor losers like me could afford a ride.  -sniffle-  -tear-  -whimper-
3. Provided the Europeans can avoid crashing again (gord knows we'd do it the next time):  Send a robot to Mars.  Have the Europeans do the same.  Fight to the death!  (remember to license the original Star Trek fight music for that event).
4. Lots of variations on robots fighting to the death in space, duh.
5. All kinds of cool stuff showing "what would happen in space".  Stuff like "What happens when you fire a shotgun in space, what happens to the gun, the astronaut (we'll we'd probably just use a dummy), the target?"  Explosives, water balloons, squirt guns, watermelon!

Why the heck doesn't NASA just bring a Watermelon along in some airlock just toss it out the dang cargo bay for us to watch?  I mean come on!  Just one watermelon to start!

I'm seriously considering registering my own domain and putting up a site dedicated to this concept (probably already done).  Nothing special, just a demand for more awesome.