Category: Uncategorized

Batman Begins and Fantastic Four

I saw Batman Begins almost two weeks ago with and . Aside from some (major) physics beefs, mostly related to the doomsday device, it was a good movie. And it had a philosophical notion or two buried in there. “It’s not who you are on the inside, it’s what you do that matters.” The theme of redemption is another big one. Not bad on the skin, better for those into bruises. The special effects eye candy was good.

Friday night I saw Fantastic Four with Mitch (the roomie), Tom (friend of mitch, from nebraska, 2nd generation japanese immigrant), and Adam and Troy (gay couple, formerly downstairs, no sex relationship). Troy was doing the driving. Some lively political discussion ensued. Troy voted for Bush, probably as a ‘moral values’ thing, and is somewhat upset with how things have been going. I pity the boy. He has a few places of not-broken-ness. I noted the gas prices on the way to the theater and was appalled that they were in the $2.50 range. The speed of their ascent worries me.

As for the movie itself, total fan service. And, ya know, I’m okay with that. Chris Evans (with a nice hairy chest, thank you) naked in a pool of hot water in the snow? Jessica Alba in her skivies in public? A movie centered around showing off their powers? The science here is enough to make me cry, so I just ignore it. The plot that shows up for the first 15 minutes and the last 25 minutes hangs together well enough. Total explosions, skin, superpowers fluff. And I liked it. I expected Miss Alba to be totally implausible as science chica based on the previews and one review. She doesn’t exactly make the most credible scientist, most of the female science types I know are not going to crack a gasket over people using words like the noun “variable” in the discussion of interpersonal relationships, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Thing’s story is told with some depth and sensitivity, he pretty much makes the show, as much as any of them do.

Yes, I’m complaining about comic book movie ‘science’. That’s like two giant steps away from anything resembling reality, and I weep for the future, but so it goes. =)

Character Concept

The character concept as it currently stands is a lycanthrope/undead hunter, bastard child of an illicit affair between two aristocratic merchant houses. In his adolescence he develops a mark with magical powers from his father’s house. He hides the mark, runs away from home, and lives in the wild for a time, where he is picked up and trained by a forest warden. He enjoys the work, but finds the life too solitary, so he wanders again, this time to larger places, and finds his place in the Church of the Silver Flame. Here he thrives and grows into his purpose.

Years pass.

Tailing a werewolf in a farflung jungle, he follows her into a set of overgrown ruins, and stepping through a moss covered stone arch, he finds himself in a park on the edge of an enormous, interplanar metropolis. After a few days, he finds himself lost, hungry, and with no obvious way back home, his target nowhere to be found. He finds a few adherents of his church in a community, but no authority figure guiding them. As they teach him about his new home, he begins to take on a leadership role within the community. Protecting them and finding a way back home are key goals for *insert name here*.

Human, male, 32yo Ranger 2/Paladin 4
str 16 dex 6 con 12 int 12 wis 12 cha 14 + 2-5 points (first two: con, next two: wis, last one: cha)

skills concentrated in survival (for tracking), search, riding, maybe knowledge religion, & nature, concentration.

feats: least and lesser dragonmark of passage (expeditious retreat 2/day and dimension door 1/day), knight training (can freely take levels of ranger without mucking up his ability to progress as a paladin), and something else.

Ranger fighting style will probably be two-weapon, but irrelevant (he’ll typically be in heavy armor, though if he’s tracking people through a jungle, I suppose full plate might be sub-optimal). Favored enemy will be lycanthropes.

baiting the tiger: HIV revisited, what constitutes sufficient evidence

Sorry, can’t resist.

So, I ask you, and and anyone else who is convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS: what would constitute sufficient evidence that HIV _is_ the cause of AIDS?

And I ask those of us who believe that HIV does cause AIDS: what would constitute sufficient proof to convince us that it does not?

I’ll start

Since he asked so nicely

invited me to list 5 of my idiosyncracies…

This is harder than it sounds. I feel like I’m made of idiosyncracies, but when I try to come up with them, identities or other not-really-idiosyncracies come to mind. For instance, veganism doesn’t count. That’s more identity politics. But I digress. My list…

  1. I like living in a unit with several people, but must have my own bedroom. If I have a single or an efficiency, I will spend extraordinary amounts of time with friends who have more populous homes.
  2. I put pillows on my head and wear them as hats. Also laundry baskets, pots, bowls, and other such non-hat items.
  3. When flying, I generally cross my arms on my knees, lay my head on my arms, and nap that way. Typically I wake up with one of my arms asleep, in 10-15 minutes.
  4. I think A1 is the best condiment for fries
  5. I bounce. When I’m bored, hyper, meeting new people, hanging out with old friends, by myself, whatever. I bounce.

sex and the single scu

Yeah, so I’ve been single since March 16, 2002, no news there. I’ve been gay.com and m4m4sex.com free for at least 8 or 9 months. Well, maybe not totally free, but I haven’t hooked up from either since then. And I’ve spent less than 10 hours total over the past 8 months on gay.com & m4m, so that’s an enormous drop. My mmorpg’ing picked up sharply at that time, but has since declined. My sex life abruptly dropped when I self-diagnosed warts, and I haven’t completely healed since the surgery. That’s bad, and atypical. I need to be taking better care of my butt. More fiber, more ointment, more advil, and more post-dump baths (not exactly practical at work).

But this combines to make for a much less eventful sex life for me. I’ve had maybe 6 partners since november. I’m sure most of my lj acquaintances think that’s pretty high. Consider that only one of those people have I slept with more than once, and with him, I believe it was twice. Maybe that’s still high for most, but not for me.

I’m content with this. I’ve had enough sex partners to last a lifetime really. I suspect I’ll have a few more and that’s cool too. But if I were to find someone suitable, even someone I’ve slept with before, and settle down with them for the remainder of my life, I could be cool with that.

I feel like I was a bit over the top with my drooling over the straight guys at the wedding. My friends are safe, I have established patterns with them, which include joking about buttsex with them, but which safely neutralize any attraction. However, with new people, the ruts are less well worn. And I feel the pull of neat-new-person attraction. And, being me, I don’t shut up about it. And soon, I’m that horny nerd who’ll never get any, because he can’t stop running his mouth about it. *shrug*. It’s a theory.

I’m picky, but also bad at selling myself. And usually, too eager-puppy with guys I am attracted to. *shrug* Another theory.

The reason I picked up so much on gay.com isn’t because I’m uberhot, or because I dazzled them with my wit, but because getting laid through gay.com is more a matter of patience and persistence (and it doesn’t take nearly so much as hetero dating does) than a matter of demonstrating personal worth. Not to say I don’t have a lot going for me, but to say that it wasn’t the bits of myself that I most like that got me laid, it was going to the right environment that got me laid. And being a bit out of character there.

I’ve criticized a number of guys for doing things online that they’d never do in person. Ignoring a hello, leaving a conversation without saying anything, jumping to the worst conclusions about anything anyone says. I did a little of all of that, but my most frequent deviation from real life behavior was my outgoing online nature. I’d say hello to strangers as they entered the room. I wouldn’t let one person’s rejection, no matter how brutal or passive aggressive, stop me from talking to someone else. It reminds me of the king of the hill episode where the kid meets his girlfriend at the shoe store. In person, I get one rejection and I curl up into a fetal ball. (Sometimes literally, but basically never immediately).

I would not hit on guy after guy in a bar until I found one willing to go home with me.

I’ve tried squeezing attraction out of affection, and it hasn’t worked. I’ve tried increasing volume of inductees, in hopes of finding a good one that’ll stick. That didn’t really work either and it certainly wasn’t worth the cost.

Current strategy is to build up a comfortable social circle and either see what comes of it, or see if my carefully built nest draws one in to start a mating dance. And even if the distant goal isn’t achieved, the proximate goal is well worth it.

Nat’s & Krista’s bonds of civil matrimony

So, friday I flew out of Midway to Charlotte (no delays!) to attend ‘s and ‘s (now ) wedding. Nat’s dad picked me up at the airport, and after some initial confusion, I was dropped off at the bachelor party, where I was promptly greeted by such well known figures as , , babailey, Mark Stehlik, and . All with at least one sheet to the wind. I also met new worthies, , , , and . Though I did pour myself generously, I didn’t drink much. Video game and other madness ensued. I largely got my ass kicked as a variety of princesses and puffballs in super smash bros. But in HALO 2, I held my own. Much thanks due to Mitch, my current roommate, and my fellow players’ states of inebriation.

The next day, the big day, , , and I abandoned Ken to sleeping in, hit a nearby mexican fast food joint, then returned to cleanup and go to the wedding. This is when I should have remembered the camera that entrusted me with to take a picture of him as krista entered the place of marriage. I was a dork, and completely forgot it until we were at the wedding site and had no time to turn around & get it. I made enough noise about it, though, that pulled out his camera and did it for me. Not exactly the plan, but so it goes.

The ceremony itself was very tasteful, simple, and well done. Also, pretty god-free as I recall.

Throughout the reception, we were seated next to the buffet, but the last ones given the all clear to make use of this. We made up for this by scamming half the chocolate covered strawberries for our table when dessert came. It was largely the same crowd from the bachelor party, though and Mike Tolan(?) joined us later, having suffered a similar flight experience to what I’d had to sit through earlier in the week.

I was one of the snarky people who didn’t dance and criticized the dj. To be fair, he was pretty crazy. He seemed determined to make a spectacle of the event, and succeeded in being pretty loud, and perhaps rather more attention gathering for himself than is truly appropriate for the dj at a wedding, but enh. A good time was had, regardless.

I stayed til the end of the reception, then it was back to the bat hotel. , babailey and I ended up in babailey’s room playing a card game new to Ken and I. In the end, Bryan beat Ken’s and my combined scores by 1, while Ken beat me by 1 (out of over 100). It’s an interesting 3 player trick taking game. Recommended when only three players are available.

Up in the morning, back to chicago at O’hare. Small delay taking off, but we still landed early. A day with my parents, including the Blind Faith Cafe, a walk along the beach in Evanston, grocery shopping, and a trip out to see my nw suburban aunt, uncle, and cousins (including a hyper little 19 month old, daughter of one of said cousins). Back home and collapse.

movie time with Jhim and Robbie

My 4th of July wasn’t too terribly eventful, but it was pretty fun. Reversing the situation from last week, is in my city of residence for work-related purposes. So, he, and I did something much like what he, , and I did. Hang out, catch a movie (Bewitched, I was rather disappointed, they could have done so much better…) and dinner at the chicago diner. is a great guy, who I would recommend to just about anyone for an evening of around-the-town fun. is also quite cool, and it’s fun (if not difficult) to make him blush, even if it doesn’t show on him.

HIV and AIDS

reposted an article which is highly critical of the current medical practices and beliefs with respect to AIDS and HIV. My reading is that it’s trying to imply HIV probably doesn’t cause AIDS without saying it. She quotes someone who says that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, but also notes that she isn’t sure that these people are correct, but feels that they need to be heard.

The major claims seem to boil down to a few, paraphrased endlessly.
HIV meds are toxic. This is true. The dissidents claim that this does not get acknowledged by the mainstream medical establishment. This is not true to the best of my ability to discern. Everyone I’ve talked to on meds has shared their experience with the side effects. They say that this is something they are told about before they start a regimen. Standard medical practice for a variety of diseases. We don’t tell people about the side effects of drugs they won’t be taking, because that’s time consuming, and useless. HIV meds are hardly unique in having nasty side effects. Perhaps these side effects should be trumpeted loudly, particularly to the bugchasers, but that’s another story.

The denialists talk about alternate treatments, but give no information on long term survival rates for people provided only such treatments, on expense of these treatments, etc. Nor do they talk about late stage AIDS reversal rates for these treatments. Contrast this to HIV where the experiments to determine the efficacy of AZT were cut short because AZT was showing dramatic benefits and it was judged unethical to allow patients to die when treatment was available. This was probably under active pressure from ActUp and similar organizations. I do kinda wonder what the FDA on this was.

Dissidents, or denialists rarely mention the frequency with which AZT and later, cocktails produced dramatic turn-arounds in AIDS-related declines. They acknowledge that it “helps in some cases”, but never get into anything like hard numbers.

I have my own concerns about entrenched pharmaceutical interests, and I believe in the HIV theory. Assume for a second, if you don’t already, that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Pharma makes big money off of treatments for HIV. If a vaccine and a cure were both developed, such that HIV was a thing of the past and AIDS never occurred, and the profit to be made from selling this innovation were trivial, how possible would it be for makers of current HIV meds to buy off, deny or supress the creation of such? That would be difficult to arrange though. But it’s the pharmaceutical industries that run the trials for new drugs. How often will they pony up for trials of anything promising such benefits?

But, in the first several years of AIDS, the disease was treated in a variety of ways without using Protease Inhibitors or Reverse transcriptase inhibitors (AZT is one or the other I think). Do you have any real evidence that they were anywhere near as effective?

You want research done on nutritive therapy, great. Should be comparatively cheap. If there’s such good reason to doubt, why is there difficulty raising the money? Start up a parallel group to do what you believe is real research. Fundraise, prove the world wrong. I certainly won’t stand in your way. I might even donate a dollar or two.

Sorry, this is not the cohesive, point by point post I’d hoped to make, but I’m not inundated with free time. Maybe I’ll revisit the topic later.

More travel woes

Today was a 9.5 hour day, just getting from my dc hotel to my chicago home. 5-6 hours of that spent in a plane on the ground, no breaks. I saw Vin Diesel’s the Pacifier. It was okay. Then like 95% of million dollar baby. I missed the last few minutes of that, but a web search provided me with a plot synopsis of the two major events I missed. Depressing movie that. The christian critique of it that I googled up amused me. The critique had no problem with people beating the shit out of one another, but was utterly horrified by assisted suicide for a quadraplegic amputee no longer able to breathe without support. What crap.

Also, by dint of much time on the phone, my student loans are on track for consolidation. Woo! … *collapse* *snore*