24

owned up last night. I was totally with it the whole show. What was even more amusing were the reactions I got over IM from the UT crowd that would always come in at 8:00 to watch on my TV [warning: spoilers from last episode are below]:

soph: Chase = straight thuggin'

syed: damn
blake: yeah dude
syed: fer shizzle
blake: i was hoping to see more resolution in the tony/michelle realm tho
syed: he's goin to jail!
blake: they werent 100% about it...
blake: but damn, 20 years
blake: whats michelle gonna do?
syed: find another mexican

adam: DOUCHE BAG
adam: THEY CUT HIS ARM OFF
adam: YEEEEEEEEEES

tim: OMG WTF his hand
blake: holy hell that was crazy
tim: yeah
tim: ...and i was hoping all the middle schoolers were going to eat it...

I love you, 24 kids. Looking forward to season 4. Especially since....

They're writing Chloe out!

Free time

So my summer's been officially planned: I'm taking two classes, five weeks each, at UTA, and working on the Worthington competition again (the P2 essay contest I was a winner in last year). The rest of my time will be free, so I'm very happy about a relaxing summer. The classes are scheduled really well: first one's like 12:30-3:00, four days a week, and the second one is 10:30-1:00.

Classes start next Tuesday, so I've got nearly a full week of vacation. There's a Smash tourney and a LAN coming up, so I'm spending lots of time playing games in preparation for those two on top of my own personal gaming. I'm almost done with the GT4 School Mode, so then I'll go back and go after all the silver medals. I think I'm very close to finishing Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (my objective right now is to capture Sadono alive), and I finally finished Deus Ex 2 a couple nights ago. The ending I got really made me think, so I might go back and get the other endings just to see if they treat the player the same way. Throw in Smash and Counter-Strike practice, and I'm doing a hell of a lot of gaming.

But it gets better! I'm spending my nights being social and talking to a lot of people. Hell, I managed to drain a full cell battery charge last night talking. That made me happy enough, but then I got in touch with Claire Potter (who I was really close with in high school - she was practically like a sister to me). After not seeing her for a year, I've got a lunch date with her later this week and since that conversation I've been thinking how I've managed to let some really special people slip by me. So, dear amigos, amigas and readers, please forgive me if I haven't been close enough with you over the last year. My bad. But I'm always willing to fix it over a cup of coffee, if you are.

I really don't like pro-lifers

So north of Austin on I-35 there are some billboards put up by Prolife Across America. They are, you guessed it, pro-life. It's one thing to advocate your message like any other group, but you cross a line when you stick up a baby on the billboard and say:

I GOT MY "GENES" AT CONCEPTION!

I quote the billboard verbatim. Including the quote marks. Now, why on earth, if they really meant what they're talking about, would they put the word "GENES" in quotes? It would be one thing if the group were to essentially say: "Look. Genetics. Very well understood scientific fact, right? Well hey, your baby you're thinkin' of killin? He's already got your genes. Think about that."

Well, our lovely pro-life friends don't quite do that. Instead, they block off "GENES" as if it's some kind of joke. Yeah, I'm really pretty sure those quotation marks are in direct mockery of the science of genetics. In fact, that billboard is even mocking you, O silly plebeian genetics-believer. The billboard, by my careful interpretation, is saying, "HEY! You and your "GENES" talk aren't welcome here! Look at the baby over there! Feel sorry for his harmless self! DON'T YOU DARE THINK OF KILLING HIM, OR WE'LL SEND YOU TO HELL."

Kind of like how in the wake of the Bush administration, half the country doesn't believe in global warming anymore. But I digress.

The real point of this is that history always looks sour in retrospect upon the people who worked against the progress of science. If there were a movie made about Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin.. oh wait, there have been movies about Darwin, and the guy who's against the scientific reasoning is always the bad guy, and he always loses.

So pro-lifers, contemplate this one little point. Do you accept that when the movie is made about your kind, you'll be the bad guy?

Man

Cowboy Bebop is still one of the most beautiful shows ever, even after seeing every episode multiple times.