A request to MGM (and Hollywood)

Could we please stop using the Stargate theme as the soundtrack for every sci-fi action-adventure trailer that comes our way? It's getting a little bit ridiculous for that theme to be used in the Sky Captain trailer. [Although this is not nearly as bad as the use of the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack for promoting The Two Towers.]

Why does Mother Nature hate Florida?

One can only help but wonder if there's some sort of divine message at work here. First Charley, then Frances, and now Ivan looks ready to batter central Florida. All good things come in threes, huh?

[At this rate, if I were a Floridian, I'd be mortified about the hurricanes whose names start with "L" and "O," as well, because at this rate, those hurricanes will be loaded for Florida, too.]

Too painful

After categories such as "My Newt," "Small-Town Folks," and "Little Red Riding Hood" in the Jeopardy! round, "Big Words," "The Vast and the Furious," and "Tall Buildings" in the Double Jeopardy! round, the category for Final Jeopardy! today was "Historic Mediums."

The writers are really stretching the bounds of good taste right now.

Quote of the day, Part II

From a liberal political blog:

"Ohmigod--shrill is the new black!"

Quote of the day

Courtesy Dan Shaughnessy in today's Boston Globe:

"Obviously, it's been a tough year for me," said Nixon, sporting a hideous Mohawk in a locker room that henceforth shall be known as the Hair Club For Men.

Gender equality

This is quite a switch. I'm going through the list of students registered for the class I'm teaching this semester. The gender split is 4:1--in favor of women. That's right, an engineering class of 75 students, and nearly 60 of them are women.

Who said women can't be chemical engineers?

Hair today, gone tomorrow

So, I recently experimented with growing a beard. It did not come as a surprise to me that the result was an unmitigated disaster. What surprised me was that no one really commented on it until about two days before the end of the experiment. [The experiment ended when my parents--who had occasionally hinted that I should try growing a beard--saw the horrific results.]

While it would have been fitting with the tonsorial nightmare that is the 2004 Boston Red Sox, it was altogether a disturbing result, and one that was fortunately, to my knowledge, not captured in photographic evidence to be preserved and thus cannot be used against me.