A new beginning...

The Chicken Index Device Mechanism has a current reading of "Melt". Unfortunately, the CIDM is not suitable for use with floods, so we are decommissioning her until the next "Arctic Blast". May we not need her for the rest of the season.

Weather update update

The Chicken Index measurement tool (the "Chickometer") has collapsed under the weight of the off-the-scale readings. Until the thaw, any further updates are cancelled.

Here's something weird about Portland: there have been several press conferences downtown, discussing how people should be dealing with the weather. Our city has had a pretty good response, opening emergency shelters and adapting the public transportation.

But the press conferences have all been held by the mayor-elect.

Nothing against Sam Adams, but where the hell is Tom Potter? Seriously, the guy's been MIA since the election results were announced.

Lamest. Duck. Ever.

Weather update

Portland received 8 inches of snow on Saturday. To illustrate, I took pictures throughout the evening. Now, everyone knows the best way to gauge a storm is by the chicken index.

Below is a slideshow of my own backyard chicken index.

Councilman Leviticus

I was swimming through some Chick Tracts earlier today, because I was bored and I'm a sucker for ridiculous, hyperbolic straw arguments with a multitude of footnotes. Here's one about the Ten Commandments (they're from the most proven book in history, you know). I especially like how bitter the teacher is. Chick tracts are a fun way to learn about all those pretty stories.

Exodus is good, with its ten plagues, and Genesis has that awesome story about Lot's daughters getting him drunk and having sex with him, but I always think of Leviticus whenever I read or hear people pointing to the bible to prove god or whatever, because it was obviously written by men, and usually with an axe to grind and terrible fear of women. It's like reading a Star Wars pop up book and then checking your bloodwork for midi-chlorians, or ecoding laws carved by a fiery shrubbery, discovered through E-meter or produced by an angel to be read from a hat.

It's just a bunch of rules about menus and property rights. It's like taking a bunch of county code, burying them for 1000 years and building a religion on that.

Fuck. Yeah.

My region 2 DVDs came today, and so I dived into the installation of the new dual-region DVD player. I cleaned out the fust from behind the TV and pulled out the old player. Installed the new one without any pain and followed the instructions posted on the Amazon page.

I prayed a little prayer to the Great Emu in the Sky and put in the DVD.

Fuck. Yeah. I hope we're snowed in for the rest of the week. We've got BRITISH COMEDY to watch.

I will not lower myself to an "Untraceable" pun

So, the husband and I watched Untraceable on demand last night. It was his idea, because he told me it was filmed in Portland and I have no reason not to believe him.

I say that because I have no recollection of this movie being made, other than a vague recollection that I read somewhere that Colin Hanks was in town. The Broadway Bridge, the one we use all the time, was apparently infested with movie-types.

I won't publish any spoilers (although really-- if you're that big a fan of Hanks, Diane Lane or soft core torture porn you should already have seen this movie), but I do want to say that they really should have cast one of Peter Scolari's kids as the baddie. It would have been one delicious shout out.

Anyway, the movie got points for actually taking place in Portland. There's no shooting in Vancouver and saying it's The Bronx in this movie. The name "Portland" is said so often, I'm pretty sure the writer got paid per mention. This movie puts Gus van Sant's local references to shame. Not only did they reference actual neighborhoods and attractions, they didn't really location-hop too much, like every movie ever made in San Francisco does (Not every one is San Francisco commutes via cable car. In fact, no one does. Stupid iconic landmark).

The plot itself is too implausable not to notice. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has more realism. The reviews are right-- the message about the public's thirst for and disconnect from violence is a little lost behind all the torture and killing in the movie itself. But the location porn was pretty good. At least it makes Portland look awfully well-wired.

I'm now a major tributary of The Amazon

I just spent a lot of money on Amazon. I guess it was a bad idea to take that handful of cheap- vicodin-substitute right before turning on the laptop.

It's K's fault, you see. I stopped by her office to hand her socks or something (it's part of some charity thing, and yes, I am embellishing just a little, as the socks handoff was actually yesterday, but shut up), and she told me about a DVD player she just ordered that plays DVDs formatted in either region 1 or 2. This meant she could order that elusive Eddie Izzard DVD only available in Region 2 format. Nice.

So, I had her send me a link, as there are a few British comedy DVDs that we would very much like to have. And soon we will have all two hundred dollars worth of that comedy.

Don't look at me like that. I could have spent much, much more. I only took a handful of pills, not the entire bottle. I've got standards, you know.