As some of you may have heard, as of October 31st, I am now officially de-singlized. Things began when revsaintmichael showed up at my place in the early afternoon, dressed in his "Dark Oberon" costume, thus making him ready both for Halloween and to conduct the wedding ceremony. He and I and my groomsmen - Damon, Clint, and Will - met up and went to Jessica's parent's house, where we met with my family to take pictures. Then, because it was a Halloween wedding, we went to a cemetery to take more pictures, the overcast sky adding just the right ambiance (the muddy ground not so much). Now, when we had planned all this, we expected that we'd get done with just enough time to get to the restaurant for the ceremony. Instead, it took a lot less longer than we expected. So with nothing to do, we decided to go to Grotto's Pizza, in Newark, on Main Street. Since it was homecoming weekend, the place was packed, and the crowd let out a huge cheer when we got out of the limo (though I spotted a few people making "wtf?" faces in the crowd). However, since few of us were actually carrying any ID's, they wouldn't let us in, so we actually ended up going to Iron Hill - less than a minute away from where we were getting married - to kill time until we were ready to go.
( The Wedding )
If you want to see pictures (albeit with watermarks), you can check them out here
( And then, we went to Hawaii )

Birther nutjob Orly Tatiz sanctioned for $20,000.

The Court finds that counsel’s conduct was willful and not merely negligent. It demonstrates bad faith on her part. As an attorney, she is deemed to have known better. She owed a duty to follow the rules and to respect the Court. Counsel’s pattern of conduct conclusively establishes that she did not mistakenly violate a provision of law. She knowingly violated Rule 11. Her response to the Court’s show cause order is breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional. She expresses no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct. To the contrary, she continues her baseless attacks on the Court.

Orly Taitz: The Jack Thompson of anti-Obama conspiracy theorists.

This week's episode of This American Life is all about why health care costs are so high in this country and why they keep rising. Like their earlier episodes on the economy, they present everything in a way that's interesting and easy-to-understand without being simplistic. And balanced too: it's not just the evil, greedy health insurance companies who are to blame. The episode even ends on a hopeful note, albeit a somewhat ironic one.

Friday night I saw Zombieland and enjoyed it. It wasn't side-splittingly funny, but definitely amusing, although Jesse Eisenberg's performance made me think that the director really wanted Michael Cera, but couldn't afford both him and Woody Harrelson. The movie is something of a deconstruction of zombie films, though not to the extent that, say, Scream is of horror films. Also, whereas most zombie apocalypse films are grim tales about the struggle to survive, Zombieland actually looks at the potential for fun in a world with no other people.

Saturday night I went out to Frightland (warning: noisy website), which is basically a combination of walk-through haunted house (several of them, actually), horror hayride, and low-rent mini-carnival of the sort that gets set up in mall parking lots. It's located in Middleton, Delaware, which I don't know much about, but is probably best exemplified by the sign at the Frightland entrance which said "leave your weapons in the car." I actually haven't been to a haunted house since my early 20s, and as a kid, I was simultaneously attracted to and terrified. While I like the concept, I don't really like being scared and I don't enjoy having people jump out at me from the dark. Also, I couldn't help but notice that Jessica and I appeared to be the only people there over the age of 17 who weren't there with kids.

As it turned out, the haunted house(s) were scary, though not as much as I expected. By that I mean that my last impression of them was from childhood, when they used to scare the crap out of me. The one's at Frightland would indeed scare the crap out of a kid, but I found that while they did get me a few times, for the most part I didn't react too strongly. I think that's because once inside, I became alert to the places where I expected someone to jump out. I also became very alert to misdirection, i.e., there were things that were obviously set up to get my attention, so that I'd be looking away from where there scares would be coming from. Still, waiting for someone to jump out at you from the dark makes for a very tense experience, and while it was kind of fun, it's not something I'm in a rush to do again.

The horror hayride was a new experience for me, and it was a lot more impressive than I expected, as it wasn't just a bunch of guys in masks jumping out from the dark, but a very elaborate multimedia experience that included pyrotechnics, giant animatronics, and at one point, the entire hay cart being lifted off the ground. At the end of it we had to walk back to the main area. This included a trek through the woods, with various people in costumes jumping out at you, and a trip through two more small-ish haunted house attractions - an abandoned asylum and a western ghost town. At that point, we were both a bit fatigued by people jumping out at us from the dark, but overall we had a good time.

Sunday morning we walked into town for the food festival, which was basically a street fair where various restaurants set up booths. I had a small, cheap, very tasty pasta dish and a delicious BBQ pulled-chicken sandwich, a lemonade smoothie, and baklava, and went home with some excellent fudge. All-in-all, a very satisfying weekend.

Polanski's Arrest: Shame On The Swiss

This was written by a woman named Joan Z. Shore who is billed as the co-founder of a group called "Women Overseas for Equality." Here's a charming little selection from the piece:

But there is more to this story. The 13-year old model "seduced" by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!)

Well, there you have it. She was almost the age of consent (well, actually, it was 16 at the time, but who's counting), so that totally makes it ok for Polanski to have seduced raped her, the little minx. Apparently, "age of consent" means the age at which it's ok to start raping women.

Then there's also this essay by Anne Applebaum (what is it with these women defending a pedophile rapist?) who concludes her defense of Polanski with "If he weren't famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all." Well, that's true in that if he weren't famous, he probably would have just been thrown in jail and we never would have heard about him, but aside from that, I have to ask, if he weren't famous, do you think anyone would be defending him?

Assholes.

Went to the Maryland Ren Faire this Saturday for pirate weekend. Was supposed to meet up with a few people, but due to a variety of reasons, everyone ended up bailing out, although we did end up meeting one of Jessica's friends there. Mid-afternoon, it started to rain. We were supposed to go to DC that night b/c a bunch of Jessica's old peace corps friends were getting together, so we were in a situation where we didn't want to stay at the fair, but it was much too early to go to DC. Jessica's friend, who was also going to the gathering in DC, and who lives in northern VA, invited us to go to her place. We accepted, but misinterpreted her directions, ended up taking a wrong turn, and got stuck in traffic for a long, long time before finally getting off 95, checking the map, and realizing we were way off course. By that time it was late, and we were tired, so we decided to just go home. That meant going all the way back around DC again. By the time we got home, we had been driving for five hours.

Oh well, at least I found some info on a forum that just might resolve the problems I'm having with getting Neverwinter Nights to work on my computer.

Ira Glass interviews Joss Whedon. Look for the Sept. 23 entry.

We're having an apartment-warming party this Saturday at 7pm. Yeah, it's a little last minute-y, so come by if you're around. Contact me if you need directions.

Friday morning Jessica and I went down to Broadkill Beach on the Delaware shore for the weekend. We stayed at a fantastic beach house that my stepfather's family rents for a few weeks every summer. Broadkill Beach is on a small island in the Bay that isn't commercialized at all, so only the people staying there use the beach. As such, every morning we could walk out the door right onto a largely secluded beach. What's more, despite a forecast that called for scattered storms and cloudy skies all weekend, we ended up having fantastic weather most of the weekend.

( Read more... )

Just wondering who, if anyone, is planning to go. 9/26 - 9/27 at the Maryland Renn Faire.