Michael Lee's Train of Thought

Well, they put up a list of the November Project Angels, which I am on since I helped contribute....and my brother spent more than me! No Justice! :)

There's a black hole somewhere between michaell@michaell.org and michaellee@qwest.net, which is where I had my michaell.org e-mail forwarded to while I was starting this account up, so I haven't seen anything that bounced between the two for the last couple of hours....wierd.

I was amused to see that Salon.com Books discussed Oz vs. Narnia, as I got both the first Oz book and the Narnia books for Christmas. I'll be interested in rereading both again sometime... (the operative word is sometime, as I also got The Sims, and that's draining my life...

news.com.au - Giant asteroid just misses Earth [ 24dec00 ]

Eeek!

Thomas Yohe dies, co-creator of 'Schoolhouse Rock'.... oh, this is definitely a sad thing. I think most of the people that are roughly of my generation learned a great deal through the songs from Schoolhouse Rock. Conjunction Junction, I'm just a Bill.... it's not good.

Ok, can you believe that this toy ever existed? Hahahahahahaha.

It's too damn cold.

Star Trek On Ice: Be afraid.

Labels: startrek

Amongst the comics I got this week was the first issue of Ultimate X-Men; it was amusingly entitled The Tomorrow People, and better yet it used the font of the 70s British Television Series of the same name.

It was also pretty good -- clearly influenced by this summer's X-Men, but also a nice start for those of us that like the concepts of The X-Men, but think that the continuity of the last ten or so years have made the mainstream X-titles pretty much unreadable. (Please, Grant Morrison, make those titles good! )

I see that I'm now on DR. JACK BEVEN LIST of DOCTOR WHO FANS WEB SITES in my new location. (You can check out his whole site as well)

Let me know if you link to me, as I'll put a link here as well.....

Labels: doctorwho

Menards man shares memories -- one of my favorite memories at Gallifrey One in LA was talking to a bunch of Brits who had received video tapes from the US and were fans of the Menards Guy, as it was amusing to go half way across the country and discuss something so regional as a TV ad spokesperson....

Honest Bias by William Saletan -- This article in Slate reinforces my opinion about biases; and that they're natural, and you have to be careful when you are evaluating anything in life. (And this isn't just governmental political biases -- I think the biases apply just as much in science fiction fandom in its various forms and factions.)

And of course, bias plays in on both sides of any communication -- for example, both the news source and the news consumer. A Rush Limbaugh is going to have a conservative bias -- and you might ignore what he says entirely if you're a liberal, or interpret it in the most negative fashion possible, even when you might occasionally agree with him, or he's presenting a factual story. Same thing when you hear a conservative complain about the so-called liberal bias in the mainstream media....

9 Types -- Enneagram Personality Dynamics -- another one of those personality test things.... I'm in a three way tie between "Thinker", "Skeptic" and "Peacemaker".

Wow. Buffy was good tonight. Angel was fantastic and amazing. Both series are the only thing that can absolutely get me in front of a television whenever there is a new episode. And unlike Star Trek -- which couldn't manage two series at the same time very well -- or Babylon 5, which couldn't manage a spin off. Where Angel is emerging not only as a different series, but has frequently been better than Buffy this year....

Amazing.

Labels: buffy, startrek

Dubya is a Mac user....I don't know what this says, but it's amusing

A Lego Matrix

and with good reason --- it took me two or three times longer to get home than usual. Ick, ick, ick. Had to shovel the driveway again as well. Why do I live here? :)

I was added to the list of Minnesota Bloggers...so I'm committed to doing this for a while.

Not looking to driving home in the snow....

Last night it was a bunch of Christmas British TV episodes at the MN British Television Viewing Society -- I hadn't seen any All Creatures Great and Small in a while, it was a lot of fun.

The weather continues to be cold and wintery here, the worst I think it's been since I moved back to Minnesota a couple of years ago. Though I don't know, that may be just me.

When I realized that the Vikings were losing to Green Bay, I switched over to VH-1 which was doing a Behind the Music on 1984. It hadn't really crystalized how much that was a critical year for me, and how it's the first year that I look at the popular (especially music) culture as something that I recognize as "mine" -- I saw my share of MTV that year; and it's stuff I got when it came out, or listened to when it came out, and not just as as historical records that I discovered later. Perhaps it is the season, but something like Do They Know It's Christmas struck a chord, since I got that single when it came out.

Perhaps it was because I had seen bits of the 1977 hour before that -- and while I recognize all of the songs from that as well, I don't look at them in the same way; if they trigger memories of a time, it isn't 1977 -- but of a variety of different years afterwards, and the songs aren't a part of their original context.

Another disturbing thing is that someone who was born in 1984 is older than I was in 1984; The Police would be to them like The Beatles are to me -- a band that broke up right when you were born.

Ick, ick, ick. This has been a pretty bad week. I just finished digging myself out; we had a couple of inches of snow around here. It's also been cold; cold enough that my car may be a fatality -- it's in the shop, and the inital reports weren't good, and I'm afraid I might have to buy a new vehicle. I'm by now means a car expert; I'm not terribly mechanically inclined, I'm afraid. I didn't want to buy a new car for another year; and that was what I was saving for, but I don't think I'm going to be so lucky.

I tried to drive my car back to the dealership for review, and I almost, just about, made it -- it died about a mile away from the shop.

I went to see Edward Scissorhands at the MISFITS Movie Night last night. I was fortunate that it really wasn't snowing that much until I got home, it was a pretty easy drive back, but there was still a lot of it. It was a good film; I think it's interesting to compare Edward Scissorhands to Burton's Penguin in his second Batman film really.

I found the history of women's voting habits in this article to be particularly enlightening.

What Now? by Alan Brinkley and Michael McConnell from Slate was a really interesting wrap up of the election issues. I've got grave concerns about what this election revealed -- ones that I don't think could be fixed after the election took place, and I think we have an imperfect result. But there will be other elections in the future, and we can consider that when we vote in the future. I'm also concerned as the parties become more regional; I think it's better for there to be healthy competition between the two parties, because that means that neither one is too comfortable with power, with too strong of an opinion of their own entitlement. I disagree with conservative Republicans on a great many issues, especially on many social ones, and I'm skeptical about a party that seems primarily interested in the upper half of the income spectrum, even though that's where I am personally. But they're there, and now the challenge is whether they'll be responsible or not; and if they aren't their time in power should and will be extremely short.

As you can tell, some of what I'm linking to in this little journal are just my favorite articles in items like Slate and Salon, this may change some now that we're out of the political season for a while, as I want it to be a bit of my insight into the world -- personal, political, entertainment, whatever. It's more for me than it is for anyone reading it -- there's more than enough things on the web for you to read. But this is a way I can collect the items someplace and not necessarily harrass all of my friends with e-mails saying "look at this link!" -- I can do it here, and some of them might actually check out this page from time to time.

I hope that George W. Bush's Weblog continues now that it looks like he managed to sneak his way in to the White House thanks to a few bad ballots. I also expect that he gets as much respect as Bill Clinton did, who at least managed to clearly win his elections....

Who owns fandom?

I didn't know that fandom.com owns Creation as well....they're definitely evil then. Which is too bad -- I check cinescape's web site fairly regularly, as well as occasionally checking out fandom.com

I saw Dungeons and Dragons over the weekend and wrote up a review.

My brother is also in town, and we spent some time on Saturday playing that other evil Wizards of the Coast game, Magic: The Gathering. We played it quite a bit when we were both in Madison, but neither of us have played it much lately. Harmlessly fun game, though definite a drain on cash if you want to collect the cards....

One of the best parts of my stay at the UW of Madison was the weekly issue of the Onion, and while part of me is happy to see their success, I've got to be a little concerned to see that they are going to open a Big Apple branch; is it going to become increasingly bland as it gets a greater circulation, or go down the course of Spy magazine?

Finite Games Can Be Won.
But Life Is An Infinite Game

This was my fortune today in a fortune cookie I had for lunch, and it's sadly appropriate for the day. My grandmother, Harriet Lee, passed away this morning. She had been ill with Alzheimer's for quite some time, so she hadn't been herself for a long time, and it was more her shell that was walking around than anything else. So there are always mixed emotions at a time like this; sadness because you lose a part of your past, but also the comfort that a long, uncomfortable, unpleasant struggle is now over, and she's free from the struggles of this life.

I only got to the nursing home a couple of times while she was there; she was far enough away that it was a trek out there. One of my last memories of her was checking out the various birds that were near the chapel at the nursing home; where she would, like a child, find them as new discovery. She would have to be told who I was, of course, and that made it all the more difficult to go there.

There are many stories I could give at a time like this -- growing up, the big holidays at my grandparents, and she would go to great trouble in cooking up all of the food. She would make the most amazing, complicated cakes for birthdays, ones that probably needed an engineering degree to fully understand. The times when I'd brought my friends out to my grandparents to go sailing on Lake Pepin, and she'd make everyone feel welcome. Growing up, the times when she would help teach me and my friends.

Thanks, Grandma. I always knew that you loved me, even when you couldn't tell me anymore.

A pretty neat map of the Americas at night...

Have a very Wookie Christmas -- I'm sorry, I actually do want this to be included when the inevitable super duper Star Wars DVD set is eventually released. It's horrible, evil, and wrong on so many levels. It's not only the worst piece of Star Wars, it's the worst piece of Star Wars theoretically possible. But as such, it really is amazing -- sort of like getting I want to spend my Christmas with a Dalek and the like.

Besides, then you'll want to see Jar Jar Binks again as an antidote....

Labels: starwars

memepool.com looks like a good site of noise..... That way you can check whether you are a geek or not.

The (New) Red Meat Construction Set

Hahahahaha! I don't real the real Red Meat as much now as I did in college, but this is classic...

Hey, I'm currently in the top ten (and top American) in Dream Who, a little game for Doctor Who fans that was a bit of a distraction one day a couple of months ago for me....

Labels: doctorwho

Slashdot | On The Dune Miniseries pretty much is about what I'd expect of comments for something like this -- some good, some bad, some liked the Lynch movie more, others liked this more, some thought both were awful....

I just finished watching the first part of the Sci Fi channel's production of Dune. I haven't read the book since high school, but I've seen the David Lynch version a couple of times (as well as the extended version he disowned). This looks more complete than that version, and more like the book. I'll certainly continue watching and taping it. (I'm also hoping someone will go ahead and write a review or two for the MISFITS site -- I'm not sure if I will or not myself.)

(and is anyone having problems connecting to the sci fi channel's web site? It is scifi.com, isn't it?)

Favorite quote of the day: His [Bush's] campaign caps an eight-year Republican struggle to get rid of a president who was willing to keep his grip on power by staying just within the letter of the law. No matter who wins Florida, we've elected another.

How true.... (my thought on Dubya has always been, the Republicans liked Clinton so much they had to get one of their very own....)

I found, as always, Slate's Everyday Economics article fascinating. There is definitely a part of me that wishes I took economics courses in college -- or perhaps that's why I enjoy reading Slate's columns on pop economics so much, since I didn't take the courses, like my friend who enjoys reading pop physics books.

And I think there's some truth to the article -- I'm still single, and nearly thirty, but don't have nearly the pressure that I would if I had as strong a biological clock as women do... I think men still have biological clocks -- since none of us are immortal, after all, but it's not the same, certainly....