They were doing a pop culture piece on NPR this evening on radiation as a bogeyman throughout the history of film. Presumably this was prompted by the perceived nuclear danger in Japan which has been dwarfed in terms of injuries and death by the earthquake and tsunami which precipitated it. I missed the beginning, so I may have missed my guess. The giant nuclear ants from Them! got a mention, a film I watched with my dad when I was little. The piece ended with On the Beach, a post-nuclear war disaster film starring Gregory Peck with a depressing ending based on the book by the same name by British-Australian author Nevil Shute. I feel like by now I should have seen this film, if not read the book, but I haven't. Anyway, they ended the piece with a mournful rendition of Waltzing Matilda that sounded like it must have come from the film, which annoyed me because I don't think our national song belongs in that film. I am going to add it to my netflix queue to confirm.

I was reading the other day about how they (the giant ants^[1]) were going to make a game featuring both Sonic and Mario. Not only that, but they were both going to be featured in the title of the game. Growing up with the Nintendo vs. Sega rivalry, this would have once seemed like the moral equivalent to having Darth Vader command the USS Enterprise-K in the Next Next Generation, or having Captain Kirk pilot an X-wing. Times they are a-changing I guess, and where there is a business case anything can happen. Just today I was reading that Dell was going to start selling PC desktop systems with Linux pre-installed, which further confused me: this can’t be the same reality that I’ve lived in for the last 30 years. All of this is way too early for April Fools, so they must be ice skating in hell for sure.

Speaking space opera, I always had this fantasy of quitting my job in corporate America/Australia by declaring “I am a programmer. Like my father before me.” (Tyler can correct me on the inaccuracy of that quote) All this with the Visigoths about to storm Rome in 410, and bring an end to the Empire^[2]. The trouble is, my dad is actually a chemist. A pretty damn good one, but although he knows Fortran I wouldn’t really describe him as a programmer. I hope that if it ever does come to that, fate will forgive the necessity of a nice dramatic statement in place of a factually correct one.

1. Damn you Tyler, I can’t use the word “they” or “them” without thinking about giant ants!
2. so my fantasies are historically schizophrenic

brothers and sisters

Today I realized that I decided to take the week of ANZAC day off. That means that I am taking a day off that I was already getting off! Oops! Part of the time I will be spending in... Canberra. So exciting (not). I want to spend more time with my siblings though. This makes up for it.

I was having this conversation with Tristan the last time I was there, and he used my own dogma and bias against me. It was pretty awesome. I was so proud of him for thinking critically and not just regurgitating what other people say. I would like to have more moments like that. I can’t believe he is going to be 14 this year. I can still distinctly remember when he was a newborn. I was a lot younger then too.

the write [sic] and wrong of it

Nobody is ever on AIM anymore. I mean, they are sort of on, in that their computers are connected to the network, but they aren’t on in that they are actually asleep. It must have something to be on the wrong side of the planet. Just like most of them also drive on the wrong side of the road. And yes, by “them” I mean the giant ants. Why is it that they seem to come up so often?