14 March 2005

 In today's edition of the Sam Ferguson Journal-Gazette:
Who cares about Belarus?, Robots = "meh", Ars mini-meet, Mom's birthday (and my toaster still rocks), Deadwood still scares me a little and Thank you for the copius amount of sunshine you just blew up my backside, Mr. Commissioner

According to Chinese news service Xinhaunet, Belarus is a-okay with them beating the crap out of Taiwan if they declare independence. Now, amid far scarier countries such as Russia declaring their support for China's new anti-secession "legislation" (I really have a hard time calling a law passed in a totalitarian state "legislation"), such a statement behooves the question "Who gives a crap?" Hurray, another nation with a horrid track record in the arenas of human rights and democratic process is supporting China's right to prevent the people of Taiwan from declaring their independence!

Seriously, countries like Belarus and Russia stating that they support China's right to keep Taiwan from seceding is a bit like Mussolini and Hirohito stating that they really didn't mind if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

In other news, Jessi and I took my mother out for her birthday on Friday night. We ate at our favorite Chinese place, House of Cheung off of 71st & Keystone. My mom hadn't been before and seemed to really enjoy it. The quality of the food there is exceeded only by the atmosphere and the stellar service. I don't really even care for Chinese food (there are one or two dishes I enjoy, but that's about it), but I love going to that place. If you're even lukewarm about Chinese cuisine and you live in the Indy area, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
With that shamless plug out of the way, on to the focus of the evening - our visit to the movies. Jessi and I were keen to see Robots and since my mother was curious about it as well we decided to give it a go. I'm not saying that the rumored placement of the new Revenge of the Sith trailer in front of the feature didn't have something to do with it, though :)

After wading through several hideous trailers (except for the one for Madagascar, which I think has a shot at being the funniest movie of the year), I was finally treated to the RotS trailer. I think I peed myself a little.

So then on to Robots itself. Let me say that I went into this with high hopes. Between the cast and the production company, I expecting quite a lot. Frankly, I was disappointed.
That's not to say that it wasn't funny, but it was the constant laughfest I was expecting. Robin Williams was amusing and everyone else had one or two good lines, but for the most part it was a bit dull. Still, I wasn't sorry to have seen it and recommend it to kids or fans of animation.

Saturday night, several of the Indy-area folks from the forums over at Ars hit Shallos down on the Southside for beer, munchies and general geekery. I good time was had by all, but there are certain folks who will be bonked on the head if they don't post the pictures they took very soon. I also learned that three Irish Carbombs will make stairs seem weird.

Sunday we joined my parents and siblings at my parents' house for a dinner in celebration of my mother's (March 13th) and sister's (March 6th). Dinner was simple, just BLTs and some chocolate cake, but everyone had a good time. I brought my new ubertoaster which made, without a doubt, the most impressive toast of the bunch. I'm happy with my purchase ;)

Sunday night was the second episode of the new season of HBO's Deadwood. That show gets more and more visceral every time I see it. With murder, exploitation and prostitution primary themes of the show, it makes me wonder that our nation ever survived the old west. But Swearengen still rocks, if in that evil kind of way.

Today I got to work and prepared to attend the first quarterly "townhall" meeting that our esteemed Commissioner wants to start holding. It was designed to give us a place to collective examine the state of the agency and our role in public service and for the Powers That Be to explain change and show us where we're going in the future. What I learned was that I'm expendable, our new counsel is kind of hot and that government is indeed the worst enemy any free people could ever have. w00t!

And with that, I'm done ranting for the day. I hope you all had as enjoyable a weekend as I and as eventful a Monday morning. I'm off!

-Sam

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