27.7.06

Updates

Today's Earworm- In A Dark Place, Gary Numan

Dave has clocked in a year sans egregious carbs, losing 60kgs.
Despite occasional spills off the wagon, the 20-ish that I ditched haven't found me again yet.... now I'm picturing the action scenes from Terminator 2, starring me running away from a giant cherry danish.
In my case, being a big weirdo was invaluable in pursuing a diet divergent from the sammich-and-timtam stuff everybody else gets away with eating. I'm a mac-using, Linux-using, female IT monkey. I'm my whole peer group. It makes my life very easy. While the women I work with (correction, in the same building as) are all compelled to buy the same pair of shoes from different vendors, seeking an ideal distillation of bootyness and pointyness, I'm in sneakers. Not hard to apply the same principles to food, especially when you're working the same hours as Angel Investigations.

In other news, Apple released a bluetooth Mighty Mouse. I think I'll go a Logitech v270 though, at $70-ish vs Apple's $109.

I wonder if I can dispose of my old Apple BT Mouse on EBay? There have got to be people out there who are frightened of this brave new world of multiple mouse click options.

17.7.06

Bags

After work on Saturday I stomped up and down Glenferrie Rd looking for a new laptop bag. I had a small Crumpler laptop backpack (Sheep Scarer) that I'd been really happy with. It can't hold a MacBook Pro though, so new bag shopping I went.
My first choice was a bigger Crumpler but as those are...not cheap... I wanted to give other bags a shot. The STM backpacks had a nice velour-lined lappy slot. I saw some other bags in the adventure gear shops.
The best camoflaged bag I saw was a Caribee Campus 30. 60 bucks and *nobody* is knocking that off looking for a laptop.  
In the end though, after seeing many many bags, I still picked the arguably overpriced Crumpler bag, a King Single backpack in Loud Red. It'll look better with some road grime (Crumplers tend to). 
It has a laptop slot, no dividers other than the fully covered lappy compartment, which actually makes for more capacity in the bag. The pockets on the front can easily hold the nalgene flask I also bought (water's important for low-carbers). 
I liked the older style backpack I had more (the Team Player was the next size up, I think?). The color of the lining on the new bag is buff, I'm not sure about that with red. The older bag has robin's egg blue lining, and matches the phone holder I just transplanted to the new bag. These sorts of things aren't dealbreakers though and having slept on it, I felt I'd made the right decision. 
These bags are cute though - www.bumbakpaks.com. If these were available, they would have made my short list! The shoulderstrap to backpack strap thing is clever! 

4.7.06

Lois *does* know. Ok?

Today's Earworm- Infa-Red, Placebo

After reading a whole lotta debate on the interwebs about Superman Returns, can I state for some people who missed it, Lois Lane *does* know who Jason's father is, she does remember sleeping with Supes, and *she does remember who Clark Kent is*. Mmkay?

It might seem a stretch, but bear with me here. It works in a universe where Supe's super-rohypnol wears off after a period of time, especially when Lois starts putting things together about the time period Superman II takes place in. She's not supposed to be an idiot. She might not remember everything, but she'd haved pieced together enough.

She ignores Clark at the office, much as how you'd ignore an ex. Things are predictably awkward. She can't ignore Superman (as in the plane).
She gets very little screen time with Clark so the audience isn't given much information to work with, but it's there if you look. She unloads on Clark in the taxi scene about him taking off on her. She doesn't want to work with Clark.

Just before she flies with Superman, she mentions that Clark told her that Supes didn't say goodbye because it hurt too much, she feels it's a load of crap. It might look like she doesn't know Clark = Supes, but look closer. I think she knows, but she realises that Supes probably still thinks she's mindwiped. She's giving him a shot at explaining himself. He blows it by pretending he doesn't know Clark (I'll have to see if in the original 2 films its established that he does know who Clark is, as one of his 'pals'. I think that it is). She plays along ("so, same old Clark!").

She's playing along with the whole 'secret identity' mess because she has a vested interest in keeping his identity secret, and also she might be waiting to see if he explains himself. She's testing him, to see if she can trust him.
Also, this is a big can of worms to open with her fiance nearby. She has no time during the course of the movie to bail him up and get the truth out of him.

There's a couple more hints that I can think off the top of my head. There's the glasses thing where she drops her bag, and brusqely hands Clark back his glasses without even looking at him. She knew what she was going to see. Also when her fiance connects the dots between Clark and Superman's return, who is it that deflects this line of inquiry? Lois.

There's a final subtle hint from Lex. "Superman can tell when people lie. Especially women." Lex is always wrong about Superman. Supes sure as hell didn't know she was lying about Jason's parentage, or that she didn't remember. It's a throwaway line, but considering the cuts to this movie, that line was there for a reason.

I know that all of that seems a stretch, but its a small one. I don't have any problem with the timing of the pregnancy. She's a busy woman, she might not have realised she'd missed her period for a couple of months. Things had ended abruptly with Superman, and then she took up with her fiance, possibly partially as a rebound. He might even have been lurking around the Daily Planet before Clark was, Lois only 'noticed' him when she was emotionally needy. Doesn't matter if she remembered or not at this point, she probably felt lonely regardless.

At the end of the movie, how could Lois not be incredibly, *blazing fire of a million suns* angry with Supes for knocking her up, if she had no pre-knowledge of their tryst? And if she remembers that, she'd have pieced together the stuff about Clark too.

I like the idea of Supes trying to relieve her of the pain of the breakup in SII, but in reality not handling it too well himself, and then leaving to try to find the truth of himself in the ashes of Krypton. Sure beats that stuff he was doing in the sequels where he kisses Lois to restore her memory when *he* needs some love, then promptly roofies her again to erase her memory. *That's* some high Superdickery.