April 2005 Archives

Friday night was a good night for dashing assumptions. First to fall was the assumption that I was moderately descent at poker. Granted it's been a while, but going out in 6 hands is pretty pathetic. Of course so is going all in on a 4 card flush. In fairness I did also have a pair of threes, still not quite a monster hand.

Since Mike was quick to follow me to the status of "beer bitch" we decided it would be a good idea to not be in that house for a while and headed to see Sin City at the Cinerama. While in the comfy semi-reclining seats we talked shop and I pointed out the reverse closed captioning system in the theater. Basically you have these little semi-reflective mirrors that you can mount in the drink holder of the seat which then allow you to see the (reverse) close captioning screen mounted on the back of the theater. Shortly after explaining this a girl asks us if the two seats next to us are taken (no) and signs to her friend that they can sit here. They sit down and the first girl starts adjusting one of those mirror things for her friend and then another for herself, all while having a conversation with us and translating between to her friend. Impressed, I ask how long she's been signing. Her whole life - she's deaf too. I mean, damn. She's been having a conversation with us with just quick glances to do the lip reading, and no strange slurred speach. Quite impressive. That was second two fall.

Unfortunately three through five were not so interesting. Three was that a comic book adaptation by Robert Rodriguez and Quintin Terrentino would be good - awful awful awful was sin city! The second was that it is unwise for two scrawny little white guys to walk through downtown seattle at 1 am on an unlit street. I think more people were scared of us (me with freshly bleached hair and mike wearing a full body balistic kevlar suit). Finally it's that drunk people still retain a small ability to drive. A guy stopped dead still in the center lane of aruara avenue north followed a few miles later by a guy heading the wrong way down the northbound lane - and not even doing that correctly since he had swerved sideways into a barrier in front of a gas station. The police were trying to administer a drunk test but this guy was having a hard time keeping the world from falling over.

Huruon and the Sea of Stories is a thuroughly enjoyable play, I recommend it to anyone who wants something not too serious and very visually appealing.

I've read a couple of articles/posts lately that talked about the virtues of listening to books on tape while you work out. I've got a wee radio/mp3 player thing and that sounds more appealing than listing to the local fox news affilate while I climb an endless flight of stairs and pointless push weight around. Anyway, I set about "legally aquiring" some listening material and decided to go with lectures over learning another language.

Fire up eMule and search for Audiobook Lecture... 962 results. Start off with Some Richard Feynmen and Steven Hawking, good physics stuff. *scroll scroll scroll*; we're into the financial stuff now, Warren Buffet and the like, obviously less popular. *scroll scroll scroll*; Hmm, classical mythology, interesting.

*scroll scroll scroll*

CIA Conspiracies...UFOs... The illuminati... Racial Purity. And there's a lot of this stuff. I'm kind of curious about the illuminati ones, but they probably contain hidden audio queues to set me on a killing rampage. They do that you know.. program you through your fillings while you sleep.

This page will be the doom of me. Not directly of course, but as a corrilary of posting here. Any time I go about 2 weeks without writing anything I always think I should just post something random, whatever is on my mind, since nothing else interesting has happened. Sometimes I post, sometimes not, but invariably shortly after I have that thought (and post or not) something strange happens - generally to my detriment. This time I didn't post - and for my troubles I get... a root canal. Yeah I thought it was going to be a nice fun broken tooth, but no, just a standard root canal. And my boss is leaving. So broken teeth and no more buffer to keep the beuracracy of microsoft at bay.

But that's okay. It's served to steel my resolve to buy Gilligan's Island. Obviously a rename will be in order. I can't live on "Gilligan's Island".. Isle del Muerte perhaps. Only 45k... so tempting.

Finally, the world must share in the joy that is Kareoke for the Deaf.