bigger is better

In the cruel world of the metaphor, the slow fat kid is akin to a rotten egg. So next time you say ‘last one there is a rotten egg’, please be aware that you’re really saying ‘last one there is you, slow fat kid.’

Farewell

I never got to go here. Always wanted to. Because that's where the cool kids would go. (or so it seemed)

sometimes, you gotta...

sometimes when you're having a bad day, or two, someone surprises you. like, for example, my husband. who is adorable and sweet and the greatest listener whenever I'm stressed out.

This week was a bad one for some odd reasons that would take me too long to explain here. I'm still digesting it. But something made me tear up today and I didn't know what to do. SO, hubby said something darling. To anyone else it wouldn't be so special, but to me it was perfect. The perfect thing to say at the perfect time.

So it's one of the days I feel like shouting, "I LOVE YOU" a thousand times from the top of a mountain.

So instead, I do this:

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you !

Cuz some time you gotta just do it. (They say Love is complex, but maybe not always.)

Binge Drinker's Night Out

This got your attention, no doubt. Hasn't happened yet, but it's not far off. Friday night, October 27th of this very year, all binge drinkers will have an opportunity to practice their craft under the umbrella of birthday celebration. Two dear pals, Micheal Sabag and George Andrews, whom many of you have met, will be celebrating their respective births at the 4Ps in Cleveland Park. Speaking from personal experience, these event have been extemely entertaining in the past.

My highlights include:

- Silent Mike, Holy Mike. (We all know what happens when ol' Sabag has one more than he can handle...)
- "Cheers! stank bitches!" ( Be ready to raise you glass, more than once...)
- "You can lay down next to me while I sleep, but that's it..." (almost forgotten...)


So let's do this people! See you there!

Most Perpetually Impressive Video Ever

This also happen to be the same song on a perpetually impressive GEICO commercial.

5 kilometers = 3.10685596 miles!

Some friends of mine and I ran Becca's Run this week end. It was a lot of fun and it was for great cause. I even beat my best time in a 5k by several minutes. Running one with some friends is highly recommended.

Becca's Run

Place	Div/Tot	Num	Name	Time	Pace
126	26/52	402	MS	25:55	8:21
127	11/60	451	AZ	25:58	8:22
325	46/52	452	SZ	32:42	10:32
326	40/60	303	CD	32:43	10:32
339	43/60	868	KN	33:29	10:47

Best Regards,
Micheal

Cylons vs. The Pink Robots

It occurred to me one day while listening to the 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips that there are some striking similarities between Yoshimi and President Laura Roslin from the new television rendering of Battlestar Galatica. These similarities may be coincidental, sure, but they also seem to extend to the properties of the robots themselves. These comparisons intertwine both the world of the album and the world of the TV show into a classic fight of good versus manufactured evil.
By breaking down the song "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" some of those similarities become evident. Let's start with the first stanza:

Her name is Yoshimi she's a black belt in karate working for the city she has to discipline her body

The most obvious point is that they both battle evil machines: robots in Yoshimi's case and cylons in Roslin's case. Roslin was not the most obvious choice to battle anything. She was the education minister and therefore it was improbable that the 41 government ministers and the president in front of her all dies in the cylon attach on the colonies. Roslin rises quickly to the occasion, assumes command and decides the humans will battle.

'Cause she knows that it's demanding to defeat those evil machines I know she can beat them

Commander Adama, the highest ranking officer left after the attack on the only remaining Battlestar, Galactica, had little faith in now President Roslin's ability to lead humanity through its darkest hour. But as he witnessed her fortitude, her resolve, he quickly came to know that she would indeed be the key to beating the machines.

Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me but you won't let those robots eat me Yoshimi, they don't believe me but you won't let those robots defeat me

The sacred scroll tell the remaining colonists that, "And the lords anointed a leader to guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland." Wow! Roslin is listed in the sacred text of the human religion! In that fact, the humans take comfort. They know that Roslin will prevail. They have faith she can win. The sacred text shows it and now the people know it.

Those evil-natured robots they're programmed to destroy us she's gotta be strong to fight them so she's taking lots of vitamins

The FDA require manufacturers of vitamins to label them with this, "This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." President Roslin has breast cancer. It's is later discovered her mother did as well. She chose not to take anything we would consider a drug, but took "chamalla" to battle her cancer. Chamalla is a supplement that Roslin's doctor laughed at the notion of taking it, think it would do no good for her cancer, which of course, it didn't. It caused some crazy snake hallucinations. The sacred scrolls seem to mention this as well, "[T]he new leader suffered a wasting disease and would not live to enter the new land, " and, "[U]pon the leader they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten, as a sign of things to come."
The rest of the song continues:

'Cause she knows that
it'd be tragic
if those evil robots win
I know she can beat them

Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me
but you won't let those robots defeat me
Yoshimi, they don't believe me
but you won't let those robots eat me

Yoshimi

Both Roslin and Yoshimi were destined for the role to defeat the evil robots. Hand chosen but by what hand?

...

About those evil robots. . .

"From One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21", Yoshimi:

One more robot learns to be something more than
A machine - when it tries the way it does - make it seem
Like it can love -
Cause it's hard to say what's real - when you know the
Way you feel - is it wrong to think it's love
When it tries the way it does...

Looking at the robots themselves, the cylons fought the humans forty years before the devastating attack on the colonies. The was a truce for forty years and the cylons learned over that time to accept a single god (the humans have multiple) and to love. How can a robot go so far past its original programming? How can it become more than what it is? Why didn't the humans find a way to limit the programming? Isaac Asimov supposed in 1942 that all robots should be programmed with three basic laws:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Would these laws have prevented the cylons from attacking their human creators? Would they have prevented them from learning to love, to hate, to worship?

You be the judge. . .

Best Regards,
Micheal

Links:
Battlestar Galactica - Official Site
Battlestar Wiki
The Flaming Lips

real feelings for a ficticious world

remember near the end of Basic Instinct, when Catherine Tramell finished writing her book and was crying? at the time I was 18 years old and not yet a fiction writer on the side. i didn't know until now that when you write a novel or a story, you fall in love with some of the characters. you developed them, helped them grow, punished them when they screwed up, and patted them on the heads when they made things right. i, like the ficticious Sharon Stone character and like so many writers out there, just finished my first short story and feel empty, not knowing what to do with myself, with all this emotion that was invested over the last 5 years of writing this one stupid story. and now that it's over, i'm heartbroken. i want the characters back, but unfortunately i killed them off. there will be no sequel. i finished the story this morning and i cried a little bit. but to be honest, five years was too much for such a little story. a blip on the map that occupied significant brain real estate for me, and it needed to end. which is why i killed them all.

amazingly, as soon as i had a mental wake for the family in the story, a new story started to bud...

so now i know why people keep writing.