In both senses. First of all, I am not sitting at one of the ChattaLAN guy's house at a LAN party. The rest of the guys are playing possibly the most boring BF1942 map ever, so I'm blogging for a second. For the record, this means that I went straight from a 10-hour drive from PA to Chattanooga to a LAN party. I haven't had anything to eat in 12 hours, and I'm starting to lose sensation in my toes. Secondly, I returned to may apartment to find that a box containing at least $500 worth of electronics had been removed. I am positive I know who took it, and will be calling the appropriate parties tomorrow. Let's just say that if he doesn't return it within the week, I'll be filing a suit in small claims court. Even if I don't get anything out of him, the satisfaction of seeing this punk - who has systematically screwed everyone who has tried to help him - go to jail might be worth something. I have lost what remnants of patience I once maintained for the individual in question, and frankly as far as I'm concerned he can screw himself. He's been screwing me and everyone else for over a year, and I've had it.
I leave for Chattanooga within the hour. I should be in by 8:00 or so tonight. If I'm not to tired afterwards, I'll be heading over to a LAN party out by Hamilton Place. We'll just have to see what happens.
Cars are a pain.
So I'm thinking more about my post last night concerning Return of the King. I forgot something I should have mentioned.
If there is one thing true about the Lord of the Rings that anyone should be able to see, Christian or not, it is that the morality of the world is pretty unambiguous. The good guys are Good, the bad guys are Bad. As I discussed last night, Jackson is uncomfortable with the idea of people being unambiguously good, and introduces pettiness, doubt, and fear to temper the nobility of otherwise virtuous characters. But he is also uncomfortable with the idea of people being unambigiously bad. Tolkien does not allow us to feel sympathy for the orcs, or the Southrons, evil men who are vassals of the Dark Lord. He dispatches them without fear or doubts. He admits that they may be deceived, but there is no sense of misgiving about killing them. Jackson can't allow this. He has to temper the evil, just as he has tempered the good. In the Extended Version of the Two Towers, Faramir stands over the corpse of a dispatched Southron and muses over the poor sod who died so far from home.
Post-moderns object to the "dehumanization" of one's enemies, as it encourages a lack of perspective and charity. This can be true. But if one is not careful - and I feel that Jackson is not - it can also lead one away from a sense of the righteousness of destroying evil. Tolkien does encourage pity for Smeagol, but only because something far greater than that with which he could be expected to deal with unexpectedly thrown upon him to carry. He's out of his league. No one shed a tear for Gollum when he died, nor did anyone doubt that he deserved to. He was a wretched, evil, twisted specimen.
Jackson complicates even this moral situation by emphasizing over and over that we should not rush to judgment. Gandalf says, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?" Jackson interprets this, like a good post-modern, to mean that we are not fit to exercise moral judgment or mete out justice. But he forgets the preceding dialog. Gandalf says that it was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand under the Misty Mountains, "Pity and Mercy: not to strike without need." But in saying this, Gandalf asserts that sometimes there is need to strike. Tolkien admits a certain degree of moral complexity, though not nearly the degree that Jackson foists upon him, but his characters are never paralyzed by this complexity. They all possess a keen moral vision in which the ultimate end is clear. Jackson has no moral vision, and thus neither to the characters he creates.
This is related to Jackson's failure to understand that Tolkien is not writing realisitic fiction, but mythology. We are not supposed to identify readily. We are not supposed to feel like Aragorn or Elrond, or even Legolas and Gimli. We are supposed to feel most like the hobbits, and only to a certain extent. Thus, Tolkien is writing a world in which moral lines are much clearer than they are in this one. And this world being as complicated and subtle as it is, we quite frankly need to be reminded that sometimes things are clear, and some things are evil, and that sometimes it is good to rejoice in the death of one's enemies.
We should pity, not the Southrons, but Jackson and his lack of moral depth.
TCS has an article on the Dean campaign's Internet support. The author, Arnold Kling, argues that Howard Dean's current success is far more about the lack of a viable alternative than, as the Internet left would have you believe, a national grassroots campaign. The metaphor he uses is the presence of the "Cha-Cha Slide" at Bar Mitzvahs: no one actually thinks that the "Slide" is connected in any way with Jewish culture, but the "Macarena" is out like leisure suits, and there's a certain faction of the Bar Mitzvah crowd that likes a silly dance. In the same way, no one actually thinks that Howard Dean represents a widespread and coherent political force, but hell, the radical left needs something to support. Kling argues that it is "affluent, college-educated, angry liberals" who created the Dean campaign out of a desperate need for a candidate instead of Dean cementing existing grassroots support behind a viable candidacy.
I think there's something else going on that Kling has either missed or elected not to discuss. The Internet is an incredible tool for allowing people of unified interest but widely disparate social and geographic settings to find each other and communicate, even organize. But this can easily deceive the participants in this newfound cyber-community into thinking that 1) there are a lot of people like them, and 2) they make up a much larger percentage of the population than they actually do. I think exactly this has happened with the "affluent, college-educated, angry liberals". Firstly, they're the demographic most likely to use the Internet, and use it for purposes not directly related to searching for NASCAR results. Secondly, they hate Bush. A lot. And thirdly, if the posturing of the Dean campaign is any indication as to how these people think and feel, they don't realize that they only comprise maybe 10% of the country at best. Only about 1/3 goes to college at all, and though that third tends to lean a good deal to the left (say 2/3 of them), I'd say only 1/3 hates Bush with any sense of passion.
This is, admittedly, a lot of people, perhaps as many as 50 million. But there are almost 300 million people in the country. You can't win an election with 50 million votes. You don't even come close to playing the party politics game. 50 million core supporters would be a fantastic showing for a third-party candidate, but not the Democratic front-runner. The Internet's siren song has convinced these people that they are in the company of the majority, when really I'd say that they're only talking to themselves.
I saw Return of the King today. I liked it. I enjoyed it more than either of the other two LoTR films. I have a lot to say about it, but even though I think that it's pretty likely that most of it has already been said better by other parties, or will be in the near future, I still want to get it off my chest. So here goes. For those who care, spoilers follow.
I say again, I liked the movie. A good reading of "The Ride of the Rohirrim" from Book V never fails to move me to tears, and Jackson's depiction did so as well.
My basic feeling is that Jackson and his team have missed the forest for the trees. There were no end of little touches that will keep the most hardcore Tolkien geek happy (Gandalf's wearing of Narya in the penultimate scene was quite gratifying), but no amount of attention to detail will save you if you don't understand what the story is about. And even though I enjoyed the Jackson's "Return of the King" more than any of the other films (and though that isn't saying a whole lot [I didn't like The Two Towers any more after seeing the Extended Verison last night] I enjoyed it a lot more than a lot of movies I've seen recently), it was this one that truly convinced me that Jackson doesn't really understand.
My complaint has nothing to do with the fact that the movies are different than the books. Of course they're going to be. I believe it was Coppola who said that the best screenplays don't make the best films, simply because there are things you can do with the printed word - like create rich and meaningful inner worlds for your characters - that you just can't do on camera. Of course they didn't include Tom Bombadil: though it's a fun story, it doesn't actually advance the plot in any essential way, and takes a damned long time to tell. Of course Arwen is going to be featured more in the films than she is in the books: Tolkien had absolutely no idea how to write significant female characters, and not only do the movies need a good female presence, but we need to be shown exactly how much Arwen motivates Aragorn to action. Fine. I don't really have a problem with that (though the whole flashback/vision thing in TTT pissed me off; not including stuff is one thing, but don't make shit up).
These would all be minor, geek-type gripes. I only have one of those, which is that Jackson seriously screwed with the geography. Part of what made Middle Earth so real is that Tolkien took the time to make the landscapes believable and the distances plausible. I don't care whether it's good cinematography or not, there's no way in hell you should be able to see Orodruin from the steps of Cirith Ungol, and there certainly isn't any way you can see it from Minas Tirith. Jackson has telescoped the geography enormously. Instead of a blasted expanse that goes on for leagues, Mordor looks as if it's only a few acres, perhaps an afternoon's solid hiking.
Okay, end geek-rant. There are a few things that started to arouse my suspicions. The first was the change made in Aragorn's character. In the books, Aragorn is a focused, driven, confident, self-possessed king-in-exile. Jackson has turned him into something of a directionless and unmotivated drifter, far more Strider than Elessar. That bothered me. In the Two Towers, things got worse. Elrond seemed, not grave and serious, but almost pissy. And Faramir... what can I say? Nobility defiled. And again, it isn't simply that it's different. I'm willing to allow Jackson to make things different. But by systematically denying the characters the chance to be noble without misgivings, he has, in my opinion, forced his own post-modern worldview on Tolkien's self-consciously Christian one.
Jackson and his fellow writers simply can't deal with nobility. They seem to need their characters to be flawed, to show some significant weakness. We 21st century sophisticates can't seem to let people be uncomplicatedly noble anymore, we have to bring them down a notch. But in doing so, Jackson seriously compromises part of what Tolkien was after. Tolkien considered himself to be writing the great mythological backdrop that the English-speaking world has never had. The Greeks have Olympus, the Germans and Scandanavians have their own pantheon and epics, but the English have no parallel set of stories. Tolkien wrote his characters to be larger than life. Jackson seems to want us to be able to identify with Aragorn, Legolas, Elrond, Gimli, and Faramir. But if we are supposed to identify with anyone in the stories, it is the hobbits, not the elves, Numenorians, or dwarves. They are heros, gifted beyond normal mortals, or not even mortal at all. They are examples of virtue to be admired and revered, viewed from below, not as peers.
But even deeper than that, I think that Jackson and his crew not being Christians caused them to ultimately miss what I think is the central theme to all of Tolkien's works: living in a world that one loves while realizing that it must come to an end, and that no matter how strong are the ties we form here, our home is somewhere else. Jackson failed to include the Scouring of the Shire in his third film, and rumor has it that he didn't even film it because he didn't think it fit. And if that rumor is true, it is in my mind final confirmation that Jackson simply doesn't understand. The Scouring of the Shire is a way of seeing that even if the great deed has been accomplished, evil changes things, and taints this world we hold most dear. Evil can be held at bay, and it can even be defeated, but its effects can not always be undone. There are some wounds that never heal, no matter how much we want them to, and no matter how much those around us love and take care of us. Some hurts are too deep, and some evils to great to ever be erased. This world contains that evil in it, an evil that has been defeated, but will not be erased until all things are made new. Tolkien knew this, and this sense of longing was embodied in all of his work, but especially in the elves.
"We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees
The starlight on the Western Seas."
They remember spring in the Undying Lands, the "stars that in the Sunless Year / With shining hand by her were sown", the land where they can be forever blessed. They remember why they left, why they were cast out, and the rebellion that caused their exile. The men of Gondor remember with longing the glory of days past, of when a King sat on the throne and ruled with strength and wisdom. Theoden feels a weight of loss when he thinks back on the days of Eorl. Even the mammon-loving dwarves recall with pain the glory that was Khazad-Dûm before their own greed drove them out. All of them know that there are glories that have been lost, some to evil, some to decay, that will never be restored, and that the true restoration lies beyond the end of the world. Jackson does not see this, because he does not believe it. He tries in places. But the conversation between Pippen and Gandalf during the battle for Minas Tirith is disappointing beyond words. He had a chance to do it right, but he just doesn't see.
Tolkien is writing about living in one world while belonging in another. This is a fundamentally Christian concept, one that Jackson could not possibly have gotten, but one that he probably could have included were his worldview capable of such perspective. This is what really gets me about the movies. Jackson did a good job. The films are wonderfully made, the attention to (non-geographic) detail is fantastic, and the cinematography is excellent. But the underlying eschatological and spiritual foundation for the work, which is the most significant part, is beyond his grasp.
That being said, I'm still planning on seeing Return of the King at least once or twice more. But for now, it's time to spend some QT with the family. Goodnight, all.
And with that, I'm out for a few days. I've got to move out of the dorm today, and will be heading back to Pennsylvania tomorrow for Christmas. As a current occupant of my apartment is in the process of vacating, I can't really move in for real until he leaves. He'll be out by the time I get back after break, but I won't have access to my computer until then.
Oh, for those of you at Covenant enjoying my music collection through iTunes, enjoy it while you can, because this box will be going down within the next few hours.
Merry Christmas.
Those of you who have seen School of Rock should remember Jack Black's course in Rock History. Well, today Salon has a piece by Eric Boehlert that should be required reading for such an endeavor. It centers around the week of Dec. 20, 1969, when the Billboard Top 10 looked like this:
No. 1, "Abbey Road," the Beatles
No. 2, "Led Zeppelin II," Led Zeppelin
No. 3, "Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas," Tom Jones
No. 4, "Green River," Creedence Clearwater Revival
No. 5, "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones
No. 6, "Santana," Santana
No. 7, "Puzzle People," the Temptations
No. 8, "Blood Sweat & Tears," Blood Sweat & Tears
No. 9, "Crosby, Stills & Nash," Crosby, Stills & Nash
No. 10, "Easy Rider" soundtrack (featuring the Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf)
It's a wonderful little excursion into the history of rock 'n roll, and well worth the read.
I made it back to Chattanooga this evening after taking Emily Shaw home to Sumter, SC. Her fever broke last night, which is great, and I left there about 1:00, arriving in Chattanooga about 8:00. Now to finish packing, moving into my apartment, and hand in my SIP. All in the next day, because I leave for PA on Saturday morning. Bright and early. This could get interesting...
Yeah, I'll be driving to South Carolina tomorrow. Hadn't really planned on that, but it's cool. A dear friend has taken sick with the flu and is being sent home. She is, of course, unable to drive, so I'll be bringing her home.
Someone over at Salon thinks that there's something significant to the fact that the new Jack Nicholson/Diane Keaton flick Something's Gotta Give outsold Tom Cruise's Last Samurai. She wants to argue that finally, people are realizing that people are willing to pay actual money to see stories targeted to "upper-quadrant" women, the demographic least likely to go to the movies.
I have an alternate theory. Last Samurai reputedly kind of sucks, and there really isn't anything else playing right now. Something's Gotta Give was in its opening weekend (and only took in $17 million), and had as its competitors such fare as Elf (which was amusing but nothing to write home about), Master and Commander (which was amazing, but has been in theaters for a month), Love Actually (which is reported to have been only okay).
Now, let's apply Occam's Razor and say that this box office "victory" has more to do with Hollywood releasing sucky movies for the past few weeks than with a major shift in interest. I get the distinct impression that Rebecca Traister really, really wants her thesis to be true, but I just ain't buying it.
pl. insanities
1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. No longer in scientific use.
Further standard definitions can be found here.
4. The expression of regret at the capture of Saddam Hussein (1,
2, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan)
I mean seriously, do these people actually think they're going to win any points this way? Do they even realize that they're expressing regret that a dictator has been toppled? The disconnect between their perspectives and anything like reality is just staggering.
Apparently any virtual world flexible enough to allow characters freedom of action will acquire a red light district. Case in point: The Sims Online (TSO), perhaps the most realistic of all online communities. Salon has an article about The Alphaville Herald, a blog created by Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy and linguistics at the University of Michigan, wherein Ludlow talks about his encounters with "scammers, thieves, money launderers, prostitutes (some of whom, he says, are minors) and other dubious types". A good example is the Herald interview with one "Evangeline", a self-described minor and manager of several online brothels (Metafilter also has a link to the story, with discussion following).
In response, characters within the game have formed the "Sim Shadow Government" (SSG), which is attempting to curb some of the "misbehavior," but has proven largely ineffectual, at least at stopping griefers like Evangeline. Additionally, Electronic Arts, the company that runs TSO, has ignored complaints by Ludlow about in-game problems, threatened him with legal action related to the Herald as violating TSO's EULA, canceled his account, and declined to comment on any of the above events.
I think the subject of virtual worlds, their ontologies, and their relationship to the real world isn't receiving nearly the attention that it should be.
As I'm sure most of you know already, Saddam Hussein was captured by American forces last night, and the announcement was made to the world this Sunday morning. TCS has a piece entitled "Thank God He's Alive", which underlines the psychological significance of capturing him alive. It's better this way:
We can see now how foolish we were to regret not rubbing him out that first night, when we dropped the bunker-piercing bomb on what we had been told was his hide-out. Had we pulverized him then, he might well have returned to claim a permanent place in the Iraqi imagination, like a kind of Mesopotamian Freddy Krueger. But, luckily, we missed him, and now we can see that there was a providence in our failure -- as so often there is in our ordinary lives as well.
Well said. My only remaining question is whether it would be more damaging to the Islamist psyche to execute him or simply hold him forever. The sonofabitch certainly deserves the most degrading and humiliating death we can come up with, but I can see an argument to be made that our purposes would be better served by not off-ing the sorry motherlover. My only qualm here is seeing that the people who support the Baathist/Islamist cause are dealt the most devastating blow that can be dealt. Whether or not that involves killing him isn't actually all that important to me. I say let the Iraqis do with him as they will.
Someone is challenging the idea that ADHD, and a host of other "emotional disorders," has anything to do with physiology. Dr. Fred A. Baughman, Jr., a neurologist, not a psychiatrist or psychologist, is disputing the canonical position of the APA (American Psychiatric Association) and NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health). His thesis? If ADHD is really a physical disease, as it is claimed to be, it should have detectable, diagnosible, physical symptoms like all other physical diseases. His findings? There are no differences between ADHD and non-ADHD patients that could not be caused by the drugs given the ADHD patients. A summarizing interview can be found here, and here is a letter Dr. Baughman sent to the Surgeon General almost three years ago.
This is something I've been saying for a long time. It's good to know that there are actual neurologists who agree with me.
Andrew Sullivan has linked to this fascinating map of the US that divides it up into ten political regions. The regions are not necessarily geographically congituous, and certainly don't run along state lines, but the analysis is quite perceptive. Give it a look.
Well, Five Points failed to strike last night. They all showed up in the south stairwell, but seeing that Catacombs was completely locked down, they left after we threw Lowen's clothes out a window. Rumor has it they were up fairly late trying to come up with some kind of response. All I have to say is: Bring it.
In other news, it seems that 5th North will be spending a significant portion of their day cleaning up the frosting they spread all over 4th North and Carter lobby. Cool.
Apparently 5th North, whom Lowen has repeatedly assaulted in the past few days, came down the stairs, wrapped him in yellow paper, and deposited him in Carter Lobby. Apparently, he has curled into the fetal position and is being released by his RA and his RA's girlfriend.
Needless to say, Catacombs is fully prepared for any possible assault, and is currently rocking out to Andrew W. K.
Covenant College News Flash!
About fifteen minutes ago, Lowen Howard was delivered, tied and frosted, to 4th North. Any Five Pointers that read this can kiss our collective Catacombian asses.
Jack Beatty of The Atlantic Monthly has a piece criticizing Thomas Friedman's so-called "new domino effect" theory, in which he states that just as the Vietnam-era theory was wrong, so is this one. Ahem. First of all, the original domino theory held that if Communism was not fought in Vietnam, it would take over the rest of Southeast Asia. Friedman is arguing that planting a beacon of democracy in Iraq will force other Middle Eastern regimes to reform or fall. The "old" and "new" theories are thus not exactly parallel. Secondly, less than a decade after US troops pulled out of Vietnam, both Laos and Cambodia had fallen, leading in the case of the latter to one of the larger cases of genocide in the last century. Beatty's conclusion is that we should allow international and UN governance of the new Iraq. Frankly, I don't know whether or not to agree with him, as his argument has nothing to do with either historical precedent or shifting away from US interim control.
That's the title of this essay from Slate by Steve Chapman of The Chicago Tribune. It's about how the Greatest Generation and the Me Generation are essentially conspiring to create an entitlement system that is going to drive people like me into the ground.
The essay is based largely on this policy analysis by Cato, entitled "War Between the Generations: Federal Spending on the Elderly Set to Explode". Basically, the number of people drawing from Medicare and Social Security will rise by 116% in the next 35 years, while the number of people in the workforce will rise by 22% in the same period. If that weren't bad enough, seniors and boomers keep adding massive new entitlements like the new prescription drug benefit.
You know the whole social contract thing where they're supposed to take care of us when we're young and we're supposed to take care of them when they're old? The deal is off.
TCS has an article entitled "Are You What You Eat?" by Jon Robison, a Ph.D. from Michigan State. He basically argues that assumming you get enough food to begin with, altering your diet probably doesn't have nearly the effect on your health that we've been led to believe. A choice quote: "...very low fat diets may benefit only about one-third of the population and may actually have detrimental health effects on another third!" Sweet. So provided you eat enough not to get malnutrition and you aren't skipping essential vitamins and minerals, eat what you damn well feel like. But avoid cafeteria food. That stuff's just not cool.
Well, it looks like they found us, because there's a really important conference going on in Geneva. The UN is debating the future of the Internet, as national governments, EUrocrats, and the UN try to take back much of the power they lost to the Internet in the last decade. Related articles can be found on Reuters (here) and the Washington Post (here).
Tech Central Station has an essay by Waldemar Ingdahl, CEO of Eudoxa Sweden, a think-tank focusing on emerging technologies, about the nitty-gritty realities of the so-called "organic" farming. Take, for example, the poultry and egg industries. They raise chickens en masse in factory-style cage setups. Green activists protest the conditions the chickens are forced to live under, and the treatment they are forced to endure. The birds are separated from other chickens, their beaks are trimmed, they are fed all kinds of medicines, and not allowed to roam freely. Bad, right? Well, maybe not. If you let the chickens out in the bardyard, don't trim their beaks, and don't give them medicine, their mortality rates are significantly higher due to infectious disease, injury in pecking-order fights, and cannibalism. So, then, which is more humane? An industrial setup or the romanticized pastoral venue? Read the article, it's thought provoking, and re-enforces a lot of thoughts I've got about the trade-offs that progress requires.
If ever you're tempted to complain about the ills of industrial society, think for a second what would happen if it wasn't there...
Remember a few days ago where a woman was apparently stampeded while waiting in line for a $29 DVD player at Wal-Mart? Well, all is not as it seems. Several eye-witnesses to the event dispute key elements of her testimony, denying a bell-ringing, a stampede, and that she was trampled by other customers. Not only that, but it turns out that this woman and her sister have filed dozens of injury claims against retailers, including nine against Wal-Mart itself, of which the woman in question is a former employee. The story can be found here.
You won't find it here, but follow these links and you will.
I found a new favorite website: Tech Central Station, which describes itself as "Where Free Markets Meet Technology". From there, I found Brian C. Anderson's cover story in the Autumn 2003 City Journal entitled "We're Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore". The essay is quite long, but a fantastically researched and crafted analysis of current trends in the media. As follow-up, Anderson has a piece on TCS discussing the reaction to his City Journal story. This is some fascinating and encouraging reading. I found a fairly accurate description of my own views in "We're Not Losing..." for as it turns out, you can be pretty ambivalent about the Bush administration and still be conservative.
With a nod to Andrew Sullivan, I shall link to the following essay by one Edward Feser, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. It is entitled "Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope?" and makes for quite fascinating reading on both a current events and theological level. I find myself strongly persuaded by many of his arguments, and only really start to disagree in the second-to-last paragraph where he misrepresents the Reformed position, but on the whole it's a masterful piece of thinking.
I was browsing through the Wall Street Journal this afternoon and saw an article in the third section about three blogs chock full of interesting economic analysis.
Brad DeLong is an economic historian at Berkeley. He's quite anti-Bush, and uses his blog for several purposes (including class information), but also posts gems like this one analyzing how new technological changes affect the economy. As a teaser, he argues that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was significantly responsible for slavery in 19th century America.
Morgan Stanley has a forum in which their top economic analysts can post their thoughts and musings. Among them is Stephen Roach, who has a Ph.D. from New York University who has been at Morgan Stanley for over 20 years. Roach is significantly concerned with productivity rates. Other frequent participants include Richard Berner and Andy Xie.
Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok run Marginal Revolution, and are both professors of economics at George Mason University in Virginia. Today they have a piece on the so-called health insurance crisis, arguing that when you factor out recent immigrants, people who are only uninsured for a short time, and college students, the 15% of the country that is technically uninsured doesn't seem nearly as bad as it might.
If you're interested in those kinds of things, give them a look. They make for good reading.
I may have linked to one of these before, but it's always worth a review. X-Entertainment tends to cover some of the worst, most disgusting facets of our consumer culture. Like this expose of Swanson's Hungry Man All-Day Breakfast. The things that we as Americans put in our bodies...
In addition to that, X-E tells of the finding of a can of 15-year old Chef Boyardee Fettuchine, 10-year old Fruity Bubble Gum Hi-C, and Jell-O of unknown age. Ick.
I've always thought that getting a tattoo was kind of a dumb idea. Thankfully, the folks over at Red vs. Blue have proven this mathematically (Quicktime required, dial-up need not apply). Additionally, CNN is reporting (nod to Fark) that physicians are reporting more and more frequent requests for tattoo removal as time goes on.
That didn't actually relate to anything, but I got a kick out of it.