The Singular Orbifold

Apparently the reason "2012" is two and half hours long is because they had to include the 'plane taking off just ahead of a wave of destruction' scene twice.

...took the form, this morning, of an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" in which Jessica Fletcher encounters the devil in a run-down flooded house, in which Jessica Fletcher was unable to speak, only scream. The devil was played by Tom Poston, who was completely straight-faced and utterly menacing.

It was just wrong, horrifyingly so. I have been terrified by Tom Poston. What the hell, subconscious? WHAT THE HELL?

( An afternoon in the life of a mad mathematician. )

I confess to having a horrible urge to see "2012" in the theatres. I do have a unhealthy fondness for apocalypse porn, and the big screen seems the appropriate place for it.

But my fondess is tempered somewhat by learning that the movie is two and a half hours long. I really don't see the need for that. All the action movies I've seen in the theatre lately have been that long, so maybe it's some kind of standard now, but really? Two and half hours for "2012"? What, pray tell, was so critical to this movie that they couldn't cut it down to 2:10 or so? Plot? (snerk) Character development? (Bwa ha ha!)

Of course, I know the answer is CG. Vitally important computer graphics no doubt stayed the editor's hand.

I just applied for a job in Toronto over the internet from a coffee shop in Adelaide.

The only way I could be more "brave new world" about this would be if I was using an internet-enabled telephone to do it.

The electronics we've tested so far seem to have survived the deluge. The only things we haven't tested are some AC adaptors, the smaller of the two external hard disks, and the power bar which we've already replaced and which we may simply write off.

( The reconstruction of Mary-Anne. )

( Chapter 31. 'Twas the night before Christmas... )

It continues!

Slowly.

I'm taking a light approach to Nano this year, just continuing the novel I didn't finish last year and participating in the round-robin. Still, some stuff will be appearing here; probably not 50000 words worth, but some.

This is a re-do of a chapter I had typed out previously but never posted; the original version currently resides on (pick one) the laptop with the bad logic board or the external hard drive that got a little rained on by the air conditioner.

( Christmas Eve dinner at the Tyler family residence. )

It's the yam pounding song! Everyone, sing:

YAM, YAM, YAM.

YAM, YAM, YAM.

...

YAM, YAM, YAM.

Despite living in the twenty-first century, I have almost never had the pleasure of taking a laptop outside and doing my work on a park bench in the sunshine (well, the shade next to the sunshine), with full internet access should I need it.

...

Ahhhhh. That's nice.

Today I have:

• Scrambled madly to help complete a paper that I should have seen the tail end of over a year ago.
• Spent ninety minutes swearing at the internet trying to figure out how to print one Cyrillic character in a LaTeX document.
• Learned that a person I had a sent an e-mail to earlier this week, with what I thought had been a simple question, had replied not to me but to the department secretary, asking her to follow up with me via the head of the department. If he had even just cc'ed me on his e-mail, I would have known the answer to my question; instead I find out a day later after he wasted the department head's time and the time of his assistant in my name.
• Dealt with students coming to my office hours ten minutes early and leaving ten minutes late.
• Got to work on my current work project for the first time this week, at 3:00 in the afternoon.
• Worked on my job-hunting portfolio, a task I anticipate in much the same way as I anticipate a dentist's visit.

The world can just jump off of a tall building now, kthxbye.

My laptop has to go to the shop today. It's not recognizing the AC adapter.

This is very annoying.

EDITED TO ADD: Did I say "annoying"? I meant "expensive". Specifically, I meant "holy flurking schnitt did you just say FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS?"

...so, on an entirely related note, anyone know of any third-party repair options for Apple laptops in Melbourne?

When the birds woke me up at 6:30 this morning, I was having a dream, one of those where you don't appear but just watch the proceedings. It took place at an abandoned house which was the scene of a grisly multiple murder, complete with clues written on the walls in the victims' blood in order to taunt the police investigating.

Various people were there, doing the things one does at a crime scene. The lead forensic investigator-slash-detective, played by Allison Janney, had just revealed some bit of forensic trivia which proved that the killer had taken time to clean the existing graffiti off the walls of the house after the victims were dead in order to make room for the messages he or she had painted in the victims' blood. This prompted one of the subordinate crime scene technicians, played by Stuart Smalley (played, presumably, by U.S. Senator Al Franken) to say, as near as I can recall:

"Oh man, we've got to get this guy! We've got to catch him and lock him up and throw away the key and then bury the jail in the earth and then take that block of earth and seal it up in concrete and then drop the block of concrete in the ocean and then set the ocean on fire!"

At that point, with every other character in the dream just staring at this guy, I woke up laughing from my multiple-murder dream.

I may or may not be participating in the univerisity Math Olympics in...10 minutes. Depends on whether or not the faculty can scrape up 5 people for a team this year. I think the undergrad society that runs the olympics is actually taunting us this year because we haven't entered a team yet.

Then, office hours. Yippee.

At that point if it's still sunny I'm taking the work laptop and getting the unintelligible-swear-word out of this office.

Oh hey...I don't have to teach for two weeks. I just learned that today. For some reason, only the second week of the two-week break is marked on my calendar. OH WELL. I still have to be at work next week, just not teaching. Maybe I'll go into the lecture hall on Monday anyway and revel in the peace and quiet.

Also, I appear to have had one of them birthday thingies, and Hugo Weaving is a funny guy. These facts are indeed related, somewhat.

Sick. Exhausted. Department head saying something about "blah blah high winds blah blah blah power outages blah blah State Emergency Service advises leaving work early today." Alright already, I'll go. Sheesh.

Edited at 5:30 to add: holy crap am I glad I left early.

I just saw the "Tron Legacy" trailer from Comic-Con on the web.

So, let's see: the new Tron movie will have:

• Light-cycles.
  
• Spiffy new CGI.
  
• Jeff Daniels.
  

...so I know nothing now that I didn't know before I watched the trailer, in other words.

Am I alone in thinking that there's more about "Tron" that needed updating besides the graphics? The original movie didn't really have anything going for it besides the setting. Once you strip away all the neon death-frisbees the actual story of "Tron", the bit with the hero and the dark lord and the evil empire, was really pedestrian and obvious. The original movie could get away with that thanks to the novelty of the setting...in 1982. But that window of opportunity closed around, oh, 1982 or so. (See also: the original Star Wars trilogy.)

In short, I really hope they remembered to write a story this time.

Whilst looking for tenth-anniversary type events to see with the missus, we happen upon a play called "God of Carnage". Intrigued by the title, we go the theatre company's webpage and...wait, is that...click on the "cast" link...

...why yes, that is Hugo Weaving.

Tickets bought.

Read this.

...that's a lot of rain.