fine whine

I was thinking about coins today. Walking to Meijer I stumbled across one that has no markings save for a picture on each side. There is nothing to indicate denomination or value, nor really to indicate if it is money at all. It's a near-blank. Even Chuck-E-Cheese puts their name on their tokens, but this thing has no indication of place of origin, either--just a couple pictures.

It got me thinking about money systems and coins. Are all of the markings really necessary? I tried to create a system of coinage that didn't need any markings at all, yet was still obvious as to value. Without identifying marks a coin would need some sort of unique shape or sizing to provide a standard for comparative value, and I didn't really want to mess with sizes. That's how we got into the whole penny is bigger than a dime but smaller than a nickel debacle still wreaking havoc in the American economy, after all.

No, in my system I thought of using points or vertices. Geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, pentagons and so forth were pretty obvious but not so useful, as what sort of system would start with three (or rather would want to divorce number of sides from value so readily)? I then imagined a bunch of mostly-round coins with a varying number of bulges to indicate value. An egg-shaped one would be worth one. An ellipse, two, and so on and so forth.

There are two problems with simplifying coins, though. First, the economics of minting money out of commonly available materials means that either the money could be melted down for its raw ore worth more or that anybody with access to cheap materials and simple machinery could make their own coinage. I didn't have a long enough walk home to spend too much time pondering such issues as have plagued the U.S. Mint for centuries. The second problem with my money would be that they'd be nearly useless in conventional vending machines. With only half a block to mull this over, I realized that vending machines were created to work with the coins, not the other way around, and with my system the same would happen. Problem solved.

Today was a project day for the plants out in front of our house. We'd tilled up the dirt some time ago, planted various green things (including some holly and, er, other stuff) and we've grown quite a collection of weeds and miniature maple trees. Pulling every little weed is quite a tedious task, so we knuckled down and got some peat humus to take care of the problem. We're not supposed to use mulch near the house because it attracts bugs, and that's fine with me. Peat humus does not smell, unlike the mulch I've had the bad fortune to encounter.

So we were off to the local Lowe's to buy some bags of the stuff. It comes in forty pound bags, and Jessica threw nine of them onto our cart this morning.

It covered just about half of our dirt. So we needed to make a second trip. This time around I brought my garden gloves, and was much cleaner afterward as a result of that pretty intelligent move. We bought ten bags which made for quite a bit of weight in the trunk of the car. It was obvious that the car was not meant to handle so much weight not in the seats, and the back was sagging quite a bit (well, a couple inches, but to me it was a lot).

I didn't realize how much it sunk the whole car until I got back into it later (with the stuff still in the trunk) and noticed, out loud, "I'm feeling low."

Almost immediately, I launched into "I got the blues. The four hundred pounds of peat humus blues."

Jessica laughed, at least. I thought it was hilarious. You probably had to be there.

Let's talk about the film Looney tunes: back in action. It's not a very good movie at all. I never would have expected to see Steve Martin upstaged by Brendan Fraser, but that's what happens here. In fact Jenna Elfman (TV's Dharma) shows more range and versatility than the comedy veteran, who is reduced to some sort of evil nerd role with coke-bottle glasses, oily hair and pants that are too short. Alas, a stupid costume does not a character make, nor does the sort-of accent he half-assedly attempts help things.

Fortunately, he's not on screen much.

Unfortunately, Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are. Daffy's funny in small doses, but any scene lasting longer than, oh, twelve seconds, with him in it starts to grate. I vaguely recall him being somewhat abrasive in the original cartoons, but this was ridiculous (but not in a good way).

Tim Dalton is perfectly adequate as Brendan Fraser's spy-movie-actor father. That said, it's more interesting to look at the posters in his house than to watch him on screen to see actual humor. There and everywhere else the throwaway gags are better. I laughed hardest when Wile E. Coyote answered the telephone with a sign saying "HELLO?" which was just brilliant.

There's a scene about halfway through showing "Area 52" which is apparently where old movie monsters (and other curiousities) go to be stuck in jars. At one point Kevin MacCarthy staggers by clutching a pod and shouting "You're next!" for a quick gag. The flying brain from Fiend without a face drops by, just after the original gorilla suit/diving helmet mashup Robot monster's monster. Elsewhere Dr. Who's Daleks pop up, which I find ironic, in that evidently their creator has decided to not allow them to be in the new remake project, yet he apparently green-lighted them to be in this bomb.

Maybe he realized that their memory wouldn't be much more tarnished because nobody in their right mind wants to remember this movie, let alone to have watched it.

Ever feel like a peg-legged pirate who has been knee-capped in the one good knee? I do.

You know, without a leg to stand on? Or as I would say, rather, without a leg on which to stand, in my stilted but more (pedantically) correct way. Me hearties.

Silliness aside, I'd like to tell you a story. Today I was at work later than usual. I had a couple errands to run and I also wanted to drop by the local model railroading store. Errands run, nobs hobbed, breezes shot and whatnot and I ended up getting home pretty late. I didn't eat dinner right away. Or for a while thereafter.

I got to be quite hungry before I did anything about it, and by that time it was dark. I didn't turn on the lights in the kitchen. I grabbed a quarter of the freshly baked pizza my wife had made hours before, and scarfed it down without much second thought. It was pretty good. The crust was by Pillsbury, the cheese from Kroger and the sauce by my mother-in-law.

Oops. I don't like her sauce. It has little chunks of peppers and other unsavory bits of things in it, and I ate it too quickly to even notice. I guess that's what I get for not chewing.

I had the lights on for the second piece, and scraped the sauce off. Still tasted good, and I was able to eat it without cringing. I realize that pickiness about food is all a mental thing, but I can't control my mind any better than anyone else. Just don't tell Jessica.

I don't think I really paid much attention to movies until about six or seven years ago. I mean, I went to them and watched them but I didn't really keep track of them nor express very much preference for any one over another. I went to a decent number of them but generally did so based on what my friends (or parents) wanted to see. Thus I ended up seeing everything from Batman to Batteries not included. Here and there I managed to happen across less mainstream movies, including Leonard: part 6 and In search of the wow-wow-wibble-woggle-wazzie-woogle-wood and The peanut butter solution, but only from the library and other sundry places of rental. Likewise the feature-length Wizard of speed and time and the New Zealand Navigator.

You know, when I put it like that I didn't do too badly as a kid after all. My plan was to lament on a childhood largely devoid of good cinema, but I, um, can't. I was going to talk about not really caring about which movies I watched until the last six to seven years, and then apparently becoming some sort of film snob. Now I seek out subtitled movies and (gasp) independent films and worse, and yet I find myself enjoying movies like Formula 51 and The transporter.

Well, it happened again. On a lark I checked out John Woo's Paycheck, despite my near-loathing of Ben Affleck. I'm glad I did, since I enjoyed it rather quite a bit. It's not a classic but I can think of far worse ways to spend a couple hours (in fact next time I check it out I want to listen to the commentary tracks, which would kill yet more time). I knew how it would end but enjoyed seeing how the characters got to it (and by knowing how it ends I do not refer to the "foreshadowing" amply sprinkled throughout the proceedings).

Maybe I'm just a bigger fan of Paul Giamatti than I am an Affleck anti-fan.

Speaking of Giamatti, there's a scene early on in the movie where Ben is beating up on some posts with a stick. Let me describe it better: There are three posts arranged in a triangle that is probably ten or twelve feet to a side. The posts consist of four or five black rubber things (smaller than tires) with translucent lights between the black things. These lights light up and Ben hits the rubber thing above them with his broom handle. The lights speed up and so does Ben. It really looked like fun.

All the while Giamatti is timing him with a stop watch. At first I thought "What a cool game. I want one!" and then I thought "They still have stop watches in the future?"

I still want one. But I think I'd build a clock into mine.

Have you ever taken a good look inside your refrigerator? I mean, when you're not looking for munchies or trying to communicate with leftovers that have gone bad. Chances are good that there's a dial or two to control just how cold the fridge and the freezer get. Chances are even better that there's a label somewhere there that says something like "9 is coldest".

I've noticed this inside more than one fridge lately. I've never checked if there's anything past 9. You know, to see if one goes to eleven. That'd be pretty cool.

Five years of engineering school and I can't figure out why radios with volume controls don't use numbers but fridge coldness dials do. Is there something easier about keeping the fridge at 4 than adjusting it a little bit, then a bit more, until it gets just too cold and then you go back a tiny bit? I mean, isn't that what everybody ends up doing anyway, eventually hitting somewhere around 4 anyway?

So why the numbers?

Anyway, I've been watching the first season of Dead like me, and I've noticed that Mandy Patinkin's character, Rube, lives in apartment 41. There's three ways that I can take this. First is that it's mere coincidence. Behind door number two is the possibility that somebody at Showtime's making a slight jab at Fox's X-files, since Fox Mulder famously lived in apartment 42. Third (and finally) I could just be a colossal goober for having noticed.