"I Know What You're Looking For"

Adam Ant

According to my Yahoo stats, 64.95% of the people who found this page via keyword search were looking for "rena sofer nude", 11.79% were looking for "rena sofer naked", and 2.16% were looking for "rena sofer pictures". That's an astounding 78.9% of my traffic.

And 10.65% were looking to see if either she, Jennifer Connelly, or Jennifer Aniston are Jewish, with 8.48% looking for "Jewish actresses" in general. Those total 98% of my search engine traffic.

The other 2% is from "lesbian spank inferno" and "rocket power naked". Heh.

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by this.

"It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

R.E.M.

Sigh. The Astros lost on Saturday, their 6th loss in 8 games. Just prior to that slide they were 1-1/2 games ahead of the Cubs; following the Astros loss and a pair of Cubs wins in a double-header on Saturday afternoon, the Cubs won the NL Central pennant.

Another season, another choke for the Houston teams.

But a look at who's in the playoffs - on the NL side, the Braves, Cubs, Giants, and Marlins; on the AL side, the Yankees, Twins, Athletics, and Red Sox. The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908 and haven't played in one since 1945 because of the "Billy Goat Incident". The Red Sox haven't won a World Series since 1918 (when they beat the Cubs) and have suffered "The Curse of the Bambino" since trading Babe Ruth in 1920. That's a combined total of 180 years of baseball futility. What happens if they both meet again in the 2003 World Series - does one of them have to win? Or would the world might come to an end first?

The Cubs vs Red Sox in a tale of two curses - isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

Hmmm... while Googling for research on this, I found some earlier references:

An editorial in today's Marion (OH) Star, 9/29/03 says that "they play on and on and on for 99 innings without determining a winner" before the Series is declared a draw.

Bryan Burwell in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/19/03 says that in the top of the 9th of Game 7 with the score tied, "the world will come to an end".

Hubert Mizell, St. Petersburg Times columnist, 7/8/01 says "Nah, it'll never happen".

Jeff Dinsky of the Daily Princetonian, 10/1/98 says "complete and total Armageddon ... The meeting of the Cubs and the Red Sox in the World Series could not be anything but the seventh sign of the coming of the apocalypse. The world would surely end before the completion of the Series."

Pat Bigold of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 9/29/98 says "for the sake of the little guy who never can seem to win an argument with his wife, a pay raise from his penny-pinching boss, or even the table centerpiece at his sister's wedding, bring on the Sox and Cubs."

Dinsky wrote of the inevitable tie in the inevitable Game 7: "Shortly thereafter the world would end, because it simply impossible for the Cubs or the Red Sox to win the World Series. The rest of us would join every Cub and Red Sox fan in a state of eternal damnation and fully understand what their existence is like."

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

So the reviews of the new NBC show "Coupling" have been not as favorable as hoped (e.g., MSNBC, USA Today). Most of the reviews commented on how much the show revolves around people having, preparing to have, wanting to have, or just talking about sex. As if they're shocked - shocked! - that this goes on. Two stations in the US have even banned the show.

I thought it definitely suffered in comparison with the British version airing on BBC America. For one thing, it's nearly a third shorter - the BBC shows are 30 minutes because of no commercials, while the US shows are 22 minutes. We lost a few jokes (unflushable, the zone), a few setups, and of course, Sarah Alexander. We did gain Rena Sofer, though. I'm not impressed with the guy who's playing Jeff. He seems more of a creepy friend than a wacky friend.

This week's best line cut from the original:
Susan on Patrick: "One swallow doesn't make a summer."
Steve on Jane: "One swallow does not make her my girlfriend."

Apparently the show has brought out a lot of people looking for nude pictures Rena Sofer, too. Traffic to my site tripled today; at 11:30 pm, the logs showed 20 hits in the just the last hour alone from search engines looking for "rena sofer nude".

I'll keep watching the show. I'm curious to see how far NBC's censors (sorry, Standards and Practices) will let things go. I highly doubt they'll allow "blowjob" and "shit" to be aired. And I'm really curious to see how Steve's "Lesbian Spank Inferno" speech will turn out. That's episode 4 of the original first season, so that should be within the month.

Arrivaderci, Galileo

Once again, Jupiter and its moons were the downfall of Galileo.

This time, though, it's a bittersweet ending rather than imprisonment by the Church. The space probe Galileo, named after the astronomer who discovered Jupiter's moons with his new telescope, was deliberately "crashed" into Jupiter so that it wouldn't eventually crash onto any of the moons which might harbor life. The probe was never sterilized before launch because nobody thought it was necessary, but over the years they've found oceans on Europa, and we don't want to contaminate the moon inadvertantly. So with the little propellant left, Galileo was sent to a crushing end in the gas giant - screaming in at over 100,000 mph, its booms and antennae ripped off, its main body melted and disintegrated, finally being reduced to its constituent atoms in the swirling winds.

One wonders if the Jovian version of Greenpeace worried much about the RTGs that Galileo carried.

I remember the launch of STS-34 in 1989 - seeing it on TV, unfortunately. We had just resumed flying shuttles a year before and this was part of the backlog of payloads. How cool was it to be part of the team that sent this probe on its way to Jupiter, not to mention Magellan to Venus and Ulysses to a solar polar orbit. I almost got to see the launch in person, but mechanical delays put off the launch until well after I had left Florida. Would have been my first launch, instead it turned into the first of three launch misses.

An engineering marvel in hindsight, the Galileo team redesigned the probe and its missions many times between its proposal in 1977 to its near-launch in 1986 (stalled by the Challenger accident) to its launch in 1989 and beyond. The delays resulted in a problem with its high-gain antenna (HGA) being stuck, which caused the NASA team to completely rewrite and upload the operating software - a brain transplant by remote control.

A joker in the sci.space.history newsgroup suggested that the last message from Galileo was "HGA is now free".

I responded with "All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there." Ironic, in that when the movie "2010" came out, we didn't really have much of an idea that Europa might be life-sustaining to begin with, yet here we are today crashing Galileo because it might be.

Of course, someone else had to respond to that with "All your moon are belong to us." Take off every zig, for great justice!

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum

Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Today be International "Talk Like a Pirate Day". Arrrr!

Stupid People Piss Me Off

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay in the California governor's election the other day, because nearly half of the voters are still using "chad" punch cards to vote, and we all remember how stupid people can be when they have to use punch cards to vote (hi, Florida!). The way I understand it, voting this way is violating their civil rights because the punch cards are more prone to error and thus likely to be thrown out, meaning that they're more likely to have their vote invalidated. Thus, they're disenfranchised.

Can someone tell me why voters are disenfranchised now and they weren't during the regular gubernatorial election, and nothing has changed? They've had three years since the 2000 Presidential election to get their collective shit together, it's not like this is new.

Sigh. It's almost as bad as Texas politics.

My first September 15th in two years

It's the new fall TV season, which means I have to get around to cleaning out TiVo's To Do List which keeps track of my Season Passes (the coolest thing about TiVo, in my opinion). So sayonara to Buffy, Dawson's Creek, and Amazing Race 4 (my favorite reality show).

I'm also depressed, because the start of the new TV season reminds me that last year at this time (when I didn't have TiVo) I had to record everything for three weeks because at this time last year I was in the Honolulu Airport, a couple hours from leaving on my way to Australia. I still have a few of those shows to watch; I gave up on watching the series that were cancelled before I got a chance to watch any of the episodes.

I didn't have a night of September 15 last year since the International Date Line flipped me from Sunday 9/16 to Monday 9/17 in mid morning (it also happened to be Yom Kippur, so I missed Kol Nidre services). I did get an extra September 30, though, on the return leg.

Which reminds me, I need to finish updating my trip report from last year before the first anniversary. I've got until October 1st.

"Come and Knock on Our Door..."

Well shit, John Ritter died yesterday.

As a child of the late 70's, he was the voice of my generation. He told us that it's OK to lie to your landlord in order to get an apartment in LA with two single women, as long as you're hooking up with hot chicks on the side and hanging out with your wacky neighbor at the Regal Beagle.

We'll miss you, Jack Tripper.

"I Read the News Today, Oh Boy..."

Beatles, "A Day in the Life"

Things happen in early September.

2003: Warren Zevon died Sunday. I'll confess to never being a fan, outside of his 1978 hit "Werewolves of London". He was diagnosed with terminal cancer a year ago and given only a few months to live. He lived long enough to see his final album completed and to see the birth of his grandkids, just within the last couple weeks. Then he died. There are a lot of people like that, who have this one final task to complete before they die - and then when it's finished, they don't have to struggle to hang on, and they expire peacefully in their sleep one night. There's a Trader Vic's bar/restaurant in Beverly Hills on Wilshire that I pass when I'm in LA. I've always wanted to go inside and see if there's a werewolf with perfect hair drinking a pina colada.

2002: Less than a week before my departure for Australia on Sept. 14th. I got an unexpectedly big income tax refund check back in April and decided to do something fun with it instead of just dumping it in the bank. I spent the summer making plans to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, climb Ayer's Rock in the Outback, visit the Sydney Opera House, and on the way back, lay out on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. I did all of that and more, and had the best vacation of my life. It really bums me out that it was a year ago.

2001: I was preparing for a visit with the ophthamologist, trying to figure out what happened to my eye. Turns out a blind spot that suddenly appeared was actually ischemic optic neuropathy, a blood clot getting lodged in the blood vessels that supply the optic nerve. I wouldn't find out for months that it was due to some genetic factors I was born with. Meanwhile, a bunch of fanatics were finalizing their plans to hijack at least four airliners and turn them into bombs.

2000: Preparing for my certification run as a Sim Control Area instructor at NASA, training flight controllers. I had already passed my ascent/entry cert, the last thing I needed was my orbit cert. My final cert date was Sept. 11, 2000.

1999: Labor Day weekend, I moved into my new house. It took the better part of a month to get everything unpacked and put in its proper place (or at least the box moved to its proper place, some of my books still haven't been unpacked yet after four years).

1995: Interviewed for a job in the Systems section of the Space Flight Training division at NASA. It's what I'd wanted to do for years, since I found out about it, but for a long time there was a hiring freeze. But in spring 1995 Congress decided that since NASA's work on the shuttle was more operational than R&D, they needed to turn more shuttle work over to contractors and focus on the upcoming International Space Station. That meant a lot of shuttle instructors had to leave, so there were a lot of openings. Ironically, in hindsight this is one of the things that the Columbia Accident Investigation Board faulted pointed out, that the shuttle should never have been deemed operational.

1994: Broke up with Chris the weekend before a friend's wedding.

1989: Went skydiving for the first (and only) time. The short story: A friend cornered me while we were drinking at J. Larkin's one night at Happy Hour, and it sounded like a good idea at the time. While we were up in the (perfectly good) airplane the next day, the instructor had to push me out of the airplane because I couldn't jump by myself; I was too transfixed by the ground moving below me. I told my parents after the fact by saying, "Remember that thing that you didn't want me to tell you about until after I did it? Well, I did it."

1984: Started college. The kids starting college this year, Class of 2007, were born in 1985. If I had a kid right out of high school, he's be in college already.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"

I only know one or two people who read this on any sort of semi-regular basis - Hi Linda! - and I have no idea whether any of the people who come here (looking to see if Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, or Sandra Bullock are Jewish, or looking for nude pictures of Rena Sofer, or looking for naked Rocket Power pictures) read this... but if you are reading this, hi. If you're just coming here looking for them, sorry, that's all I've got. Try www.renasofernude.com or www.sandrabullockjewish.com or something.

It's early September, just past Labor Day. It's two months until Halloween. So of course, we're already inundated with Halloween decorations in the supermarkets and gift shops. Except for Hallmark, which already has Christmas stuff for sale. Jesus fucking Christ, people, it's nearly four God-damned months til Christmas, can't you at least fucking wait until Halloween is over?

I swear, shit like this is why I want to be elected king. When's election day?