So we’ve got VD once again. Here’s hoping that everyone has a wonderful, romantic time, and that no one chokes on engagement rings hidden in champagne glasses, that the unfaithful manage to successfully double (or triple, or quadruple…) book themselves, and that no one thinks that “going to Jared” involves the guy who lost a bunch of weight eating Subway sandwiches.
As for me, it’s been a typical Saturday involving getting up, getting showered and dressed, heading to the comic shop, gassing up the car, and going grocery shopping and failing to get everything I needed because the human obstacle course was just too damned annoying.
Ah, romance…
Speaking of which, so far OK Cupid continues to be a terrible archer. Among its greatest misses have been a transgendered – but still functionally male – woman, a lesbian, a woman who lives more than 70 miles away, despite the fact that I limited the search to within 25, a lesbian, and a bisexual woman who states that potential matches should contact her only if they DO NOT (all caps hers) have a penis.
A blind, retarded, drunk howler monkey would probably be a better shot than OK Cupid.
But at least it’s free…
Yesterday found me spending too much damned time in front of the TV, catching up on the episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report sitting on my DVR, and actually watching some live TV, as last night saw the return of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
That was followed by the new series Dollhouse, which I’ve been kind of ambivalent about, but figured I might as well watch it once my ass was already planted in the recliner.
It was okay, and Eliza Dushku was as hot as always, so I figure I’ll probably give it another shot. It’s not like I have to worry about it being a long-term commitment; it’s a science fiction show on Fox. There’s almost no chance that it’ll survive.
Hell, moving The Sarah Connor Chronicles to Friday nights is essentially Fox moving it to death row, and the miracle that actually led the show to have a second season is bound to run out of steam.
In the promos for Dollhouse they mentioned that it was from “Joss Whedon, Creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Oddly enough, they didn’t add “and that other show that we stuck in a deadly Friday night time slot and then canceled right away.”
After Dollhouse I watched Numb3rs, and then it was time for Battlestar Galactica. I’m patient enough to let it record during Numb3rs so that I can watch it commercial-free, but not patient enough to not watch it immediately afterwards.
The same can’t be said for Heroes, which has been sitting unwatched on my DVR since Monday.
When I got home from my grocery shopping I thought about making some sort of lunch but decided to just eat some yogurt and then take a nap.
During my nap I dreamed that I was going to a party with actress Katherine Heigl, who was, for some reason, driving a very old, rusted, and trash-filled car – with, I think, Jack Black in the backseat – and she was complaining to me that I don’t draw pictures of her nearly as often as she thinks I ought to, and wouldn’t listen when I explained that most of the pictures I have of her are too much of a pain in the ass, involving entirely too much lace and complex transparency.
She kept changing her position on what it meant that we were going to this party together. Sometimes it was as friends, other times it was as something rather more, then it was as friends, but with an unspoken understanding that there was more to it than that, but which we weren’t going to discuss, and then it was just that she was giving me a ride and I’d better keep away from her during the party, but maybe she didn’t really mean it and she wanted me to figure that out on my own and this was all some sort of test.
The whole thing was utterly baffling, and shortly after we arrived at the party I woke up and thought, “That was weird,” and went back to sleep and started dreaming that it was the day after the party and I’d gone back to the house in search of something that I’d lost while I was at the party (I think it was my contact case, though why I’d bring that to a party is beyond me, but it makes about as much sense as anything else in the dreams).
Then I got up, watched Wednesday night’s Law & Order on my DVR, sat around for a while, and started writing this.
For the curious among you, the picture I posted yesterday is a drawing of Starro the Conqueror, an old Justice League of America villain. In fact, if I recall correctly, Starro was the first JLA villain, the one whose efforts to conquer the world brought the heroes together in their first team venture.
(Yep. Just actually looked at the Wikipedia entry.)
I typically don’t have a lot to do on Friday afternoons, so I took the opportunity to quickly draw a picture of Starro on the whiteboard in my cubicle. The whiteboard that other cube-dwellers use to keep track of projects and deadlines and whatnot, but which I decided would be put to better use by having a picture of an obscure (and utterly ridiculous) comic book character drawn on it.
It’s my intention to have Starro say something different every day, and it’s my hope that other people on my floor will join in the fun by writing their own communiqués from the Star Conqueror.
Over the years I’ve actually thought about getting a tattoo of Starro, and there’s a blog post that I’ve been planning to write for a while in which Starro will have a prominent role. So there’s that to – eventually – look forward to, or to dread. Whichever.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Taken To See Coraline
If you had come up to me before I saw the movie Taken and said, “Jon, you thoroughly enjoy watching Liam Neeson beat the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency,” I would have had two reactions.
The first reaction would have been something like, “Who are you? What are you talking about? And why aren’t you wearing any pants?”
My second reaction would have been, “Yeah, that sounds like me. You’re probably right.”
However, I wouldn’t have known it to be true in the way that I do now that I’ve seen the movie. Liam Neeson beating the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency is completely awesome.
If Taken had nothing else going for it – and it had plenty – that fact alone would have made the movie amazing for me.
I’m not going to write up a full review, but I will say that if you even suspect that you would thoroughly enjoy watching Liam Neeson beat the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency, Taken is the movie for you.
I’m also not going to write up a review of Coraline, but I will say that, while it did not feature Liam Neeson beating the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency, I thoroughly enjoyed it as well.
I pretty much have no complaints about it. The stop motion animation was amazing, as were the set and character designs. All of the voice actors did great jobs – even Teri Hatcher, who seems to be easier to take when you don’t actually see her and her goofiness. There’s just no way around it; back in the 90s she was incredibly hot, but she was also incredibly goofy. Now the hotness has faded – time is seldom kind to anyone – but the goofiness has remained.
I do have a couple of minor quibbles, though. For one thing, one of my favorite bits from the book was left out.
The other thing is the attempt that Dakota Fanning, as the voice of Coraline, made at having a “Michigan” accent. Even if they’d been aiming for a Yooper accent – which wouldn’t have made sense, as she was supposed to be from Pontiac – they would have missed the mark. It seems like someone told her to watch Fargo and talk like that, operating on the assumption that everyone in the Midwest talks like that.
Honestly, if I didn’t know that production was pretty much complete long before she came to national prominence, I would think that her accent was modeled after Sarah Palin.
Still, it’s a minor quibble.
After our double feature Scott and I had a late dinner at a nearby Chipotle. I haven’t eaten at/from Chipotle since I worked at AOL, so I was very eager to take advantage of the opportunity.
The one problem with that, though, is that it’s been so long that I’d forgotten what I like. It wasn’t until after I’d already had it made and paid for that I remembered that I did, in fact, like sour cream on my burrito – it merges with the rice to give it a really satisfying texture – and that while I do like the corn salsa, what I really like is the green tomatillo salsa.
Oh well, it was still good.
Anyway, I’ve already written more than I would have thought my laziness would allow, so I guess that’ll do it for this entry.
The first reaction would have been something like, “Who are you? What are you talking about? And why aren’t you wearing any pants?”
My second reaction would have been, “Yeah, that sounds like me. You’re probably right.”
However, I wouldn’t have known it to be true in the way that I do now that I’ve seen the movie. Liam Neeson beating the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency is completely awesome.
If Taken had nothing else going for it – and it had plenty – that fact alone would have made the movie amazing for me.
I’m not going to write up a full review, but I will say that if you even suspect that you would thoroughly enjoy watching Liam Neeson beat the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency, Taken is the movie for you.
I’m also not going to write up a review of Coraline, but I will say that, while it did not feature Liam Neeson beating the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency, I thoroughly enjoyed it as well.
I pretty much have no complaints about it. The stop motion animation was amazing, as were the set and character designs. All of the voice actors did great jobs – even Teri Hatcher, who seems to be easier to take when you don’t actually see her and her goofiness. There’s just no way around it; back in the 90s she was incredibly hot, but she was also incredibly goofy. Now the hotness has faded – time is seldom kind to anyone – but the goofiness has remained.
I do have a couple of minor quibbles, though. For one thing, one of my favorite bits from the book was left out.
The other thing is the attempt that Dakota Fanning, as the voice of Coraline, made at having a “Michigan” accent. Even if they’d been aiming for a Yooper accent – which wouldn’t have made sense, as she was supposed to be from Pontiac – they would have missed the mark. It seems like someone told her to watch Fargo and talk like that, operating on the assumption that everyone in the Midwest talks like that.
Honestly, if I didn’t know that production was pretty much complete long before she came to national prominence, I would think that her accent was modeled after Sarah Palin.
Still, it’s a minor quibble.
After our double feature Scott and I had a late dinner at a nearby Chipotle. I haven’t eaten at/from Chipotle since I worked at AOL, so I was very eager to take advantage of the opportunity.
The one problem with that, though, is that it’s been so long that I’d forgotten what I like. It wasn’t until after I’d already had it made and paid for that I remembered that I did, in fact, like sour cream on my burrito – it merges with the rice to give it a really satisfying texture – and that while I do like the corn salsa, what I really like is the green tomatillo salsa.
Oh well, it was still good.
Anyway, I’ve already written more than I would have thought my laziness would allow, so I guess that’ll do it for this entry.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A Battle For The Ages
I am, quite frankly, too lazy to post anything significant.
In lieu of a pointless breakdown of the minutiae of my day, please accept the following video featuring a dramatic battle between Jon Mikl Thor - Legendary Rock Warrior - and the Prince of Darkness himself,Ozzy Osbourne Satan!
(This bit of cinematic artistry comes to us from the 1987 classic film Rock -n- Roll Nightmare, a movie that was inexplicably overlooked by the Academy)
In lieu of a pointless breakdown of the minutiae of my day, please accept the following video featuring a dramatic battle between Jon Mikl Thor - Legendary Rock Warrior - and the Prince of Darkness himself,
(This bit of cinematic artistry comes to us from the 1987 classic film Rock -n- Roll Nightmare, a movie that was inexplicably overlooked by the Academy)
Monday, February 09, 2009
The Reviews Are In: I Don't Suck!
Well, one review anyway, and the not sucking part only applies to my job.
Still, it’s nice to be told – officially – that you’re doing a great job.
It’s even nicer to be told that you’re getting a big raise and a big bonus.
Too bad that part didn’t happen; the details of the merit increase and annual bonus are still up in the air at this point, and the odds don’t favor them being too big.
Still a. I still have a job and b. I’m going to get some amount of additional compensation.
So I can’t complain too much, I guess.
Scott’s back to work from his paternity leave. Before he left I told him that I should knock some chick up just so that I could get some extra time off. When he sarcastically responded that this was a good idea I said, “Meh, people have had kids for dumber reasons.”
Fortunately – in this instance, at least – I don’t have a chick that I could knock up anyway.
Stacy informed me via IM that Scott is very happy with the new addition and is, in fact, “adorable.” I’ll take her word for it.
Now that the baby is settled in, it looks as though Scott and I will be resuming our Wednesday night movie sessions.
This week we’ll be going to the actual movies, as there are two movies out that we want to see: Coraline, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, and Taken, which is, essentially, the movie Commando, but with Liam Neeson. And who doesn’t love Liam Neeson? Nobody who has any kind of sense, that’s who.
I sent Scott a link to a video sometime this afternoon and he informed me that he would wait to watch it, as there were a lot of people hanging around.
I said, “Let one rip; that’ll clear them out in a hurry.”
I went on to add that, now that he’s over 30, he can most likely produce those long, loud old man farts.
It got me to thinking.
My dad wasn’t a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a good guy. He was a talented carpenter and woodworker, funny, charming, gregarious, and just generally likeable. If you ever met my dad and didn’t like him then the odds are that you’re incapable of liking people.
Everybody liked my dad.
Thinking about that fact, I couldn’t help but wonder why it is that of all of those positive and remarkable traits, the only thing I really inherited from him was a propensity for long, loud old man farts.
As a kid, I prayed that the day would never come when I would let them rip, and rip, and rip, and rip the way my dad did.
And yet...
Thanks a lot, dad.
Seriously, they’re kind of distressing. It’s like when you see some old episode of That’s Incredible or Real People and there would be a story about some poor bastard who’s had the hiccups non-stop for like 30 years or something. Whenever I get hiccups, I worry that something like that will happen to me.
It’s the same thing with some of the old man farts. What if the fart never stops?
Seriously, sometimes they last long enough that it starts to become a legitimate concern. Especially when one excepitonally long tooting session is immediately followed by another that’s just as long.
And where the hell does all that gas come from anyway? I refuse to believe that water and a Snickers bar are a sufficient source. It’s like my ass is a portal to another dimension. A fart dimension.
All right, all right, enough with the flatulence talk and complaints about my ever-increasing gassiness.
I’ll close with a lesson that I learned this evening.
If you’re going to bake cookies, bake them after you’ve made dinner, otherwise there’s a very good chance that the cookies will end up being dinner.
Still, it’s nice to be told – officially – that you’re doing a great job.
It’s even nicer to be told that you’re getting a big raise and a big bonus.
Too bad that part didn’t happen; the details of the merit increase and annual bonus are still up in the air at this point, and the odds don’t favor them being too big.
Still a. I still have a job and b. I’m going to get some amount of additional compensation.
So I can’t complain too much, I guess.
Scott’s back to work from his paternity leave. Before he left I told him that I should knock some chick up just so that I could get some extra time off. When he sarcastically responded that this was a good idea I said, “Meh, people have had kids for dumber reasons.”
Fortunately – in this instance, at least – I don’t have a chick that I could knock up anyway.
Stacy informed me via IM that Scott is very happy with the new addition and is, in fact, “adorable.” I’ll take her word for it.
Now that the baby is settled in, it looks as though Scott and I will be resuming our Wednesday night movie sessions.
This week we’ll be going to the actual movies, as there are two movies out that we want to see: Coraline, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, and Taken, which is, essentially, the movie Commando, but with Liam Neeson. And who doesn’t love Liam Neeson? Nobody who has any kind of sense, that’s who.
I sent Scott a link to a video sometime this afternoon and he informed me that he would wait to watch it, as there were a lot of people hanging around.
I said, “Let one rip; that’ll clear them out in a hurry.”
I went on to add that, now that he’s over 30, he can most likely produce those long, loud old man farts.
It got me to thinking.
My dad wasn’t a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a good guy. He was a talented carpenter and woodworker, funny, charming, gregarious, and just generally likeable. If you ever met my dad and didn’t like him then the odds are that you’re incapable of liking people.
Everybody liked my dad.
Thinking about that fact, I couldn’t help but wonder why it is that of all of those positive and remarkable traits, the only thing I really inherited from him was a propensity for long, loud old man farts.
As a kid, I prayed that the day would never come when I would let them rip, and rip, and rip, and rip the way my dad did.
And yet...
Thanks a lot, dad.
Seriously, they’re kind of distressing. It’s like when you see some old episode of That’s Incredible or Real People and there would be a story about some poor bastard who’s had the hiccups non-stop for like 30 years or something. Whenever I get hiccups, I worry that something like that will happen to me.
It’s the same thing with some of the old man farts. What if the fart never stops?
Seriously, sometimes they last long enough that it starts to become a legitimate concern. Especially when one excepitonally long tooting session is immediately followed by another that’s just as long.
And where the hell does all that gas come from anyway? I refuse to believe that water and a Snickers bar are a sufficient source. It’s like my ass is a portal to another dimension. A fart dimension.
All right, all right, enough with the flatulence talk and complaints about my ever-increasing gassiness.
I’ll close with a lesson that I learned this evening.
If you’re going to bake cookies, bake them after you’ve made dinner, otherwise there’s a very good chance that the cookies will end up being dinner.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
OK, Stupid, I Mean, Cupid (Epilogue)
…or “To the Beat of the Algorithm of the Night.”
In looking through the “matches” that have turned up for me so far at OK Cupid, I’ve been trying to determine where the flaw in the matching methodology lies.
It hasn’t really been easy to pinpoint, as there are a lot of variables, and some obvious limitations to the matching process.
Presumably the matches are based on some sort of algorithm that takes information provided by my answers to the various questions and tests, but it’s unclear whether or not it takes into account the information I provided for the basic “about you” kind of questions – age, race, sex, height, etc. – or if that information is simply provided for the benefit of any matches that the algorithm finds based on my answers to the personality questions.
I have to think that it doesn’t take that basic information into account, given the number of matches who own pets, despite the fact that in setting my profile up I chose “doesn’t like cats” and “doesn’t like dogs.”
Obviously the information that members write about themselves can’t really be accounted for in the algorithm, as those measures of personality are far too subjective to easily translate into any sort of mathematical variable.
So, if the only place I indicated that I don’t like pets had been in the Self Summary, it would be understandable that it would match me up with people who have contrary opinions, though that is not the case; I’ve made it abundantly clear in my answers to the questions it does look at.
It also makes sense that I might be matched up with people who say in their self summaries that they are only interested in men taller than six feet, or that, as a recovering alcoholic who prefers to stay in I might be matched up with someone whose idea of fun is going out to clubs and getting hammered 24x7 (an 89% match).
So the matching algorithm itself is incomplete – most likely by design to allow for the “human factor;” that is, someone might not appear to be a matched based on the numbers, but there might be something in his or her self summary that makes up for that – from at least one regard, and seems suspect in another.
Beyond that, there’s the fact that I’ve answered 1,000+ questions, giving the algorithm a lot of data points to work from, whereas many other members – the ones who apparently have lives, which leads me to wonder what they’re doing on a dating site – haven’t provided nearly as much information.
So that serves as another barrier to accuracy.
However, I think that the biggest problem is that my personality is inconsistent, contradictory, and just plain weird.
I know, for example, that the Amazon.com recommendation engine would hate me if such a thing were possible. It’s constantly making recommendations for things that I have no interest in, but which, by all rights, I ought to.
“This Jon guy loves Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, and Liz Phair, so why the hell doesn’t he like Alanis Morissette or Sheryl Crow?”
(It would be funny if, like some hoary old science-fiction cliché, I could get the Amazon.com recommendation engine stuck in some sort of logic loop that makes it explode. “Error! Error! Does not compute!”)
This isn’t to say that I’m so complicated and mysterious that I can’t be pinned down, it’s just that I don’t make sense.
Consider the “Outcast Genius” result of that test. Clearly I have nerdy, geeky, and dorky leanings, but I defy easy categorization.
And honestly, to pick one example, I’m not a very good nerd. Or rather, I’m not an especially promiscuous nerd, or a nerd who works at his nerdiness.
My range of interests is fairly limited and inconsistent.
For example, I like computers, but have no interest in video games. I like science fiction and fantasy, but I’ve never seen a complete episode of Dr. Who in my life, and I can best describe the experience of reading Tolkien as “traumatizing.”
I don’t collect toys.
I’ve never been to any sort of con.
I love comics and animation, but I hate manga and anime.
So it’s really no wonder that OK Cupid can’t find suitable matches for me. It’s not even as simple as trying to fit a square peg into a round hole; it’s more like trying to grab hold of an amorphous, prickly mass that won’t retain any shape and refuses to be placed anywhere.
In any case, that wraps up my three-day look at OK Cupid and what appears to be the utter hopelessness of any efforts to find a suitable mate. I’ll get back to the regular nonsense tomorrow, which is to say that I’ll probably be too lazy to post anything…
In looking through the “matches” that have turned up for me so far at OK Cupid, I’ve been trying to determine where the flaw in the matching methodology lies.
It hasn’t really been easy to pinpoint, as there are a lot of variables, and some obvious limitations to the matching process.
Presumably the matches are based on some sort of algorithm that takes information provided by my answers to the various questions and tests, but it’s unclear whether or not it takes into account the information I provided for the basic “about you” kind of questions – age, race, sex, height, etc. – or if that information is simply provided for the benefit of any matches that the algorithm finds based on my answers to the personality questions.
I have to think that it doesn’t take that basic information into account, given the number of matches who own pets, despite the fact that in setting my profile up I chose “doesn’t like cats” and “doesn’t like dogs.”
Obviously the information that members write about themselves can’t really be accounted for in the algorithm, as those measures of personality are far too subjective to easily translate into any sort of mathematical variable.
So, if the only place I indicated that I don’t like pets had been in the Self Summary, it would be understandable that it would match me up with people who have contrary opinions, though that is not the case; I’ve made it abundantly clear in my answers to the questions it does look at.
It also makes sense that I might be matched up with people who say in their self summaries that they are only interested in men taller than six feet, or that, as a recovering alcoholic who prefers to stay in I might be matched up with someone whose idea of fun is going out to clubs and getting hammered 24x7 (an 89% match).
So the matching algorithm itself is incomplete – most likely by design to allow for the “human factor;” that is, someone might not appear to be a matched based on the numbers, but there might be something in his or her self summary that makes up for that – from at least one regard, and seems suspect in another.
Beyond that, there’s the fact that I’ve answered 1,000+ questions, giving the algorithm a lot of data points to work from, whereas many other members – the ones who apparently have lives, which leads me to wonder what they’re doing on a dating site – haven’t provided nearly as much information.
So that serves as another barrier to accuracy.
However, I think that the biggest problem is that my personality is inconsistent, contradictory, and just plain weird.
I know, for example, that the Amazon.com recommendation engine would hate me if such a thing were possible. It’s constantly making recommendations for things that I have no interest in, but which, by all rights, I ought to.
“This Jon guy loves Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, and Liz Phair, so why the hell doesn’t he like Alanis Morissette or Sheryl Crow?”
(It would be funny if, like some hoary old science-fiction cliché, I could get the Amazon.com recommendation engine stuck in some sort of logic loop that makes it explode. “Error! Error! Does not compute!”)
This isn’t to say that I’m so complicated and mysterious that I can’t be pinned down, it’s just that I don’t make sense.
Consider the “Outcast Genius” result of that test. Clearly I have nerdy, geeky, and dorky leanings, but I defy easy categorization.
And honestly, to pick one example, I’m not a very good nerd. Or rather, I’m not an especially promiscuous nerd, or a nerd who works at his nerdiness.
My range of interests is fairly limited and inconsistent.
For example, I like computers, but have no interest in video games. I like science fiction and fantasy, but I’ve never seen a complete episode of Dr. Who in my life, and I can best describe the experience of reading Tolkien as “traumatizing.”
I don’t collect toys.
I’ve never been to any sort of con.
I love comics and animation, but I hate manga and anime.
So it’s really no wonder that OK Cupid can’t find suitable matches for me. It’s not even as simple as trying to fit a square peg into a round hole; it’s more like trying to grab hold of an amorphous, prickly mass that won’t retain any shape and refuses to be placed anywhere.
In any case, that wraps up my three-day look at OK Cupid and what appears to be the utter hopelessness of any efforts to find a suitable mate. I’ll get back to the regular nonsense tomorrow, which is to say that I’ll probably be too lazy to post anything…
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