The New Musings of a Quiet Geek

This past week gave me a few things to talk about so...Yay! My parents were down so Monday we went out to Applebee's. First off, when I ordered the Strawberry Mojito, I was carded. Am I now at the age I should be flattered by this or is it still an embarrassment? Second off, I don't know what was more annoying the fact I really didn't like it or the fact my mother knew I didn't like it. It wasn't the mojito itself I didn't like. It was the pieces of strawberry and seeds that kept coming up through the straw. I was thinking it would be strawberry flavor... I ordered riblets. One would think that riblets would be small. I still can't figure out the difference between those and actual ribs as they were huge. After dinner we went back to their motel to swim in the pool and sit in the hot tub. Actually, it was hot tubs plural. Because families were taking the last gasp of summer, the pool was crowded. You all know how I hate that. Anyway, we went back up to the r...

If you can't go to the bathroom during the 7th inning stretch, when can you?

I apologize to my readers who have been short changed on blog posts from me but there has really been nothing worth talking about. In the past, I filled this blog up with TV episode reviews. I basically did this because in grad school and, living at home with my parents, I really had no one to discuss what I was watching with. Moving in here with my cousin has given me someone to discuss this with so I don't feel the need to discuss it here. With that purpose gone, that leaves reviews of movies, books, and CDs. I have seen a movie in about a month. I can only read just so fast so I can't crank out book reviews. Reviews of CDs depend on artists I like putting them out as well as having the money to buy them. Living on my own, I obviously have more important expenses. I could discuss my job situation. Simply put, I enjoy my volunteer job considerably but except for a "developing development" that I can't discuss right now, this isn't likely to lead to anything...

Literary Drama: Last night, I finished the Star Trek novel Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan. It was a very good book if drawn out a bit longer than it needed to be. There was one subplot of the mysterious new doctor that really was unnecessary in my opinion. I think it was included to give Spock more to do but I think he had enough to do as it was. The plot involved finding a cure for disease affecting a planet of felinoids. I'm a cat person as my readers should know so this book was right up my alley. As you might imagine, I was pleased that all of the crew played a part in the story with the exception of Sulu. The Spock subplot wouldn't have made sense with Sulu but it still doesn't seem fair... Family Drama: Yesterday afternoon I took bus out to my aunt's for a cookout. When I get there, I discover the reason my uncle, who doesn't live with my aunt, wasn't there was that he had a stroke! That obviously dominated the conversation and colored the mood. The ...

This will be long but probably not too informative because, that's not how I roll... Before I left to go up to keep my father and cat company in the absence of my mother who was at a church youth thing in TN, we watched the live action Alvin and the Chipmunks . Overall, it was a great film and throughout the movie they answered my "But what about this?" questions. (I'm still not sure why Simon could see with the random pair of glasses Dave gave him and not the pair Ian forced him to wear since neither pair was prescription but whatever...) I wanted more music as well. When I heard that the Yankees were coming to town the weekend I was going up to see my father, I thought that was awesome timing. My team failed me. (I will discuss today's trade of Manny when I have all the facts...) Sunday afternoon, we saw The Dark Knight . This movie totally rocked my socks. As you've already heard I'm sure, Heath Ledger was awesome as the Joker. Maggie Gyllenhaal added ...

I was reading TV Guide 's review of Wall-E yesterday and I really don't agree with it. They suggest that it's the best Pixar film to date. I think the exact opposite. They particularly liked that it shows humans will be fat and lazy a millennium to two from now. My thought is "Well, yeah..." but this is not really what I want from a cartoon. You know what I would like from a movie? Dialogue. Even silent movies have more than this movie. If you compare the latest cartoon movies, Kung Fu Panda had many big name stars while Wall-E had John Ratzenberger, Jeff Garlin and Kathy Najimy; in supporting roles! If you want to see a Pixar movie, better choices would be The Incredibles or Finding Nemo . Recently, I finished The Eyes of the Beholders , a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel by A. C. Crispin whose Sarek is one of my two favorite Star Trek novels. Being new at that time, it takes places early in the third season. It was a good book subplots that were in...

The Incredible Hulk movie totally rocked. It was so much better then the Ang Lee massacre. One, they had a villain in Abomination and didn't waste Absorbing Man as the first attempt frankly did. I thought Eric Bana's acting wasn't terrible but casting Ed Norton in this one to me worked better on two levels: One, Norton is less "buff" so the contrast was more appropriately striking and, two, Norton is a writer/director himself which I think helps in the acting. Speaking of acting, I was very worried when I discovered Liv Tyler was supposed to be a cellular biologist but I was relieved when she didn't have a "techno-babble" lines because, ugh. (My roommate was disappointed Banner couldn't get excited. "Not even a little.") I admittedly don't remember Abomination's origin from the comic but somehow making him a Russian-born raised in England seemed like just an excuse to not find a Russian actor. My other nitpick is the favoring ...

It's almost the All-Star Break. The Red Sox aren't leading the division and, despite the fabulous win last night, really can't seem to win on the road. Are they trailing the Yankees? No. The Yankees really suck this season. I really think their reign of terror is over. No, the real threat this season for the Sox is Tampa Bay. I watched the hideous sweep down in St. Pete earlier this week and I still can't fathom what changed for them to make them this good this late in the season. When the team was formed, it was filled with All-Star veterans who frankly were close to retirement and they sucked. Then, they switched it up and filled their team with cheap young talent that may have been better with better coaching but they sucked too. Now, they have natural born young talent and veterans who'd be on the bench on most any other team and given a chance to shine. I'm certainly not switching my allegiance but my "I support two teams..." tee may now be ...

My creation.

My life according to Google Type in the following and choose from the first page. 1: Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search: -Josh needs support to learn how to express his anger appropriately. 2: Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search: -Josh looks like he's picking his nose. 3: Type in "[your name] does" in Google search: -What Josh does when he's supposed to be sleeping. (!) 4: Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search: -Josh hates you all equally. 5: Type in "[your name] goes" or "..has gone" in Google search: -Josh goes for his first HIV test. 6: Type in "[your name] loves" in Google search: -Josh loves Unicorns! 7: Type in "[your name] eats" in Google search: -Josh eats a teabag. 8: Type in"[your name] has" in Google search: -Does anyone know if Josh has a girlfriend? 9:Type in "[your name] died" in Google search: -Josh died laughing. 10. Type in ...

This past weekend, I went up with a group from my church and my parents to the Maine Conference UCC's Annual Meeting up at the University of Maine at Farmington. Overall, it was a good meeting. In the past, I'd would go to this with my parents and get "I changed your diapers when you were a baby." Thank God no one said that exact phrase to me this time but I did see people hadn't seen me in years. This year was good because there were an equal number of people who knew me as I am now from the seminary so this was great. Friday night, my father and I thought it would be a good a idea to go grab a beer somewhere. We couldn't find a bar anywhere. In a college town. Do you see the irony here? Here's some more: according to a professor of the school I met, UMF is 75% women and their mascot is the "Beavers." The major issue of the weekend was a vote on a resolution to authorize one of our commissions to "discern" on the conference becoming ...

I will marry Jennie Garth . After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Maine in our fabulous House . We will have 13 kid(s) together. Our family will zoom around in a Green Batmobile . I will spend my days as a Pharmacist , and live happily ever after.

Yesterday because our apartment was being fumigated, I was downtown a lot. After work and lunch, I went the local bookstore and they finally agreed to put the copy I left on the shelf and then we'll see how that goes! I've alerted my friends in town so it should go well. Now if Borders agrees to a similar deal, I'll be all set... After that I went to see Kung Fu Panda with Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan to name a few. While the movie wasn't " Shrek funny," it still had me laughing pretty hard in places. There was this girl about 4 or 5 years old you was laughing hysterically during most of the film... Last night was my church's pot luck and Annual Meeting which meant no dance group and no money for me but I did get dinner. For the most part, the meeting was straightforward until the end when we discussed the new capital campaign and whether to allow alcohol in the church. The former issue was settled fairly well (The goal am...

For a couple weeks now I've been editing my free author webpage provided by my publisher. I was kind of irritated to have to edit HTML but I did it. Recently, I thought there must be an easier way to do this. I discover in the help section that there's a web editor function! Yay, right? Wrong. I can't see the damn buttons that they say are there. I read the help section again and down at the bottom of the page it says that you must have IE 6 and that IE 7, which I had, can't see it. It doesn't mention any other browsers so I download Firefox 2 and try that. Not surprisingly in hindsight, this doesn't read it either but I love the spell-as-you-go function so I'll keep it around while I sulk... In cheerier news, as I mentioned on Twitter, I finished reading Buried by Robin Merrow MacCready. (I borrowed the copy I had given to my mother.) Overall, I liked it. The mystery of what happened to Claudine's alcoholic mother seemed fairly obvious to me halfway th...

Recently, I finished an "autobiography" of sorts. I read John DeLancie's I,Q , written with Peter David. To me, it was as if Dave Barry wrote a Star Trek book. This was easily the funniest book of the genre I have ever read and I enjoyed it immensely. On Thursday, I went out to one of the few nearby towns on the busline to a job interview. Because the street, I was told to get off at wasn't clearly marked, I missed my stop and took a tour of the town. But the interview itself was fairly laid back and we spend awhile discussing my book. (They wanted me to know they already ordered a copy.) The director mentioned she thought she'd read a review somewhere either in the big city paper or one of the local weeklies. I was flabbergasted but I think now she was mistaken. (Sidenote: one of the weekly publications she thought she might have seen it in not-so-coincidently told me today they haven't but want to!) Due to some shit that went down after I came home from the...

I'll write more at a later date but I so had to share the following video:

We went to the Old Port Festival yesterday. The weather was infinitely better than the year before. Sadly, this meant it was way more crowded. I got in line for pizza and, apparently, because the line was so long, my aunt got worried so went to go looking for me! (She is my father's sister...) We got tired of crowds so we went to the movies and saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . I thought it was really good. If you've seen the other movies, and I keep encountering more and more people who haven't, the formula is fairly intact despite the later date (1957) but it had some new twists. Cate Blanchett played a Soviet scientist from the Ukraine and I freely admit it gave me some character ideas...I must comment on one thing: in the previous films, the fedora was glued, stapled, whatever to Ford's head. The hat blew around the ground to great effect on more than one occasion which I think is kind of cool. And finally, my only real nitpick per se is t...

We've been eating a lot of cake lately. Two ice cream cakes and Monday, our friend brought a chocolate mousse cake. All of this was to celebrate my roommate's birthday last week. We saw two movies. Mad Money with Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes and Ted Danson. This movie was really good despite the having to blast the volume because none of us could hear it. This wasn't the best movie I've seen Katie Holmes in but it was certainly the best role I've ever seen her in. I don't know if that makes any sense. Let me clarify. Jackie is a better character than Rachel Dawes from Batman Begins which this film wasn't... We also saw I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry . Going into this movie I had low expectations (I mean it starred Kevin James and Adam Sandler...) but it's not the derogatory mess one might think it would be and was, of course, hilarious! I didn't expect all the cameos from the openly gay Richard Chamberlain and Lance Bass to Dan Ac...

I saw this perfomance last weekend and, to me, Jenifer Nettles looks like a dancing chimp. Sexy! Also last weekend, I was watching CMT's Power Picks and the below video was up against, and slaughtered by, another video . I would have picked this one: Also, on a completely different note, Banes and Noble have finally started putting info up for my book on their site ...

I can't believe I didn't discuss this in detail but about a week ago now, the seminary had their end of the year party. This included a reception and then dinner. The graduating seniors were recognized symbolically by each ringing a bell for the number of semesters they attended. Some had to ring it as much as 12 times! Friday, I went up to Ellsworth with my grandmother and uncle. The trip was long but I did enjoy being able to discuss and listen to music with my uncle. That night, the five of us, including my parents, went to see two of my second cousins in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown! at the Grand. I discovered later that this was not the original production that starred Gary "Radar" Burghoff but the 1999 revival with Kristin Chenoweth as Sally Brown. (She won a Tony for it...). The difference is that the original version had a character named "Patty" which is not to be confused with Peppermint Patty. This character was replaced with Charlie'...