Meetings, meetings, meetings

A business meeting is an ideal gas. It consists of a set of randomly moving, non-interacting particles.

And it expands to perfectly fill the space available on a calendar.

Dirty Harry vs. Rain Man

Dirty Harry: I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself.

Raymond: Six. Definitely six.

Dirty Harry: Ah, crap.

Raymond: I'm an excellent driver.

Star Wars Regrets

Greatest regrets of Star Wars characters. If I had any Photoshop chops there would be pictures to go with these, but I'm afraid you'll just have to use your imagination for the pictures that go with these quotes:

"Clones? Crap, I thought you said 'Send in the clowns'. What a mess..."

"You idiot. I said I needed a light saber, not a lifesaver!"

"You know, I think that actually those might have been the droids we were looking for..."

Star Wars Again: Another thing that makes no sense

Obi Wan, to Anakin Skywalker: "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

Really, Obi Wan? Are you absolutely certain about that?

Another Thought About Star Wars

I just watched Phantom Menace for the first time (you know something's wrong when your five-year old son points out the plot holes...) and the abiding thought I am left with is this:

In a galaxy advanced enough to have mastered interstellar travel, every spaceship apparently requires narrow walkways that cross over deep pits. And across all the thousands of populated planets and civilizations and sentient species... nobody has invented the "handrail".

More Oxymorons

Fruit tea and herbal tea: It's only tea if it's made from the leaves of the, uh, tea plant. Those other things are "infusions". Also, they're disgusting.

Reality TV: Reality is what doesn't happen on TV. Nothing that happens when people know a camera is on them is "reality".

Reality TV Star: A double-oxymoron. Nobody whose claim to fame is that they appeared on a reality TV show is a "star". Unless you subscribe to the formula that a star is anybody who has appeared on TV by name; a superstar is anybody who has shaken hands with Ryan Seacrest; and a megastar is anybody who has refused to shake hands with Ryan Seacrest.

Drug Experience: You can take drugs, or you can have experiences, but not both at the same time. Something that happens entirely within the chemical balance of your brain is not an experience.

The most evil villain in a kids' movie?

This choice may surprise. For me it's "Mindy from the network" in Bolt. She only has two scenes. In the first, she warns the director and crew of Bolt's TV show that she will fire everybody in the room if the show loses "so much as half a rating point." In the second, she simulates concern and empathy while she pressures Penny into giving up the search for Bolt and working with a replacement dog, telling her that "people will lose their jobs. Good people, with families". The people that, a few days earlier, she was ready to fire over a tiny ratings slip.

The writers could easily have put those lines in the mouth of another character -- Penny's mother, her agent, or the director, for instance. But they chose to give them to Mindy, and in the process promoted her from being merely a ruthless and efficient executive to being someone who callously and coldly manipulates the emotions of a child while feigning concern, to get the commercial outcome she desires. That's a whole new kind of evil for a kids' movie villain.