Harry Connolly's Blog, page 182

Randomness for 6/29

1) A half-hearted defense of the Star Wars prequels. I agree with his assessment of the attitudes of the Jedi in the prequels, but I'm not convinced that Lucas himself recognized that it was problematic.

2) British stores told they can no longer sell eggs by the dozen.

3) The NY Post reacts to U.S. World Cup elimination.

4) I'm not one to link to music videos, but here's The Go-Go's circa 1984 (love the lighting) cross-dressing onstage and looking good doing it. And Belinda Carlisle sings...

Aren't raccoons supposed to be nocturnal

Why the hell is this one wandering around my front yard at ten till ten in the morning?

What does a drowning person look like?

For parents, and everyone else:

"To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening."

Gah!

Stupid, time-consuming video games and with their short term rewards.

I buy my video games used…

Most of the time, anyway.

I also rarely see movies in the theater (unless it's something for my son) and I don't belong to Netflix or Blockbuster so I don't rent DVDs. When I see movies (with a few exceptions) they're borrowed from the library. And yesterday I saw the rebooted STAR TREK DVD sitting there on the shelf, so I snagged it.

Let me say upfront that I'm not a Star Trek devotee. The original series was mostly good. The Next Generation was mostly good after it worked the kinks...

Five things for a Friday

1- You know what's annoying? Being unable to find a link to an article that you wrote about in your own blog. [added later: found it!]

2- I have a brilliant idea for a multi-million dollar invention: the ultimate alarm clock. Here's how it works. At the time you want to wake up, it uses orgone energy electromagnetic waves to stimulate the dream centers of your brain. You have a dream where you wake up after the time you were supposed to be at work, and the blind dream-panic wakes you up f...

Randomness for 6/25

1) via Robin Bailey, this video about a guy who's mom "beat the gay out of him" is crazy funny. It seems so real at the start…

2) Kitten wearing a tiny hat eats a miniature ice cream cone.

3) Next step: cub burgers. You know what surprises me but shouldn't? The free-range lion "farm" (not ranch?) in Illinois. No one would believe it if they read it in a book.

4) Steve Martin's Tour Rider leaked! So funny, and I so want to steal this idea for my upcoming non-existent book tour!

5) Cormac...

I know I've been posting a lot today. I know

This article has been open in my browser all day and I don't know quite what to say about it. So I'm just going to talk.

Here's the short version: Fundamentalist Christian minister blames a tornado on gays and months later is outed as gay himself.

I know what you're thinking: "Harry, around here we call that 'Tuesday.' What's the big deal?"

Here's the thing: The guy wasn't caught traveling through Europe with a rentboy.com guy, he wasn't arrested with a gay sex worker, he wasn't involved i...

Bookslut

Bookslut is looking for a feminist columnist and an SF columnist.

This was no boating accident!

Quick question regarding a conversation going on elsewhere: Have you ever walked into the wrong theater at the multiplex (or put the wrong disk in the DVD player) and watched a whole movie that was different than what you thought you were seeing?

This question is prompted by a grandmother and 8yo who sat through the first 15 minutes of GET HIM TO THE GREEK before deciding that they weren't seeing TOY STORY 3 and leaving the theater. Also by a group of older women who watched all of...