Lumas 14, 30.

- PROBLEM WITH THIS BLOG -
I'm having a coding problem in Internet Explorer whereby none of the posts appear. I've spent about an hour looking for this problem in Blogger and have tried several solutions and have written Blogger Help (they haven't responded). If anyone wouldn't mind taking a look at the source and suggesting any solutions, I'd really appreciate it.

- Happy 4th Everyone!

It's been a good-if-not-abundantly-productive couple of days.
Work let out early - two o'clock - on Tuesday, so I picked up a Steel Reserve (and bag, and straw) and went down to the park outside Stonewall to sit in the shade and read Aristotle. I finished his Constituion of Athens grabbed a slice of pizza, and headed over to Marco's for some Forgotten Realms with him and Jessica. We went back home around midnight (Jess has her bicycle now, which we took on the subway) and watched two episodes of Lost. I didn't sleep well, though.
Yesterday morning we watched two more episodes, and lay around for most of the day, although we did go out for lunch at Kinara's. At about half-past-three we took the bus to downtown Brooklyn and met Marco again to see Transformers.
Transformers... many of my friends are already sending out emails describing their disappointment, and in a couple cases, their awe. Whatever. I liked it a lot. It probably doesn't rank very high in terms of film quality (the script certainly left much to be desired), but I don't think we're reasonably looking for that. It's a big, expensive film about sweet cars that become robots and fight each other. Cool CGI and sound effects. How bad could it really be? I thought the transformation sequences were mesmerizing. Starscream was especially effective. Despite the script's limitations it was well-enough acted (both by actors and CGI) that character came through vividly. I won't post separately to analyze it more, but I thought that I got my eleven dollars worth. Actually, I'll take that back: I thought it was totally sweet.
After that we all went to a party at Peter's house where we barbecued on the roof. It ended up raining, but we were able to stand under a tarp for shelter. The view was incredible, with all the trees just reaching over the lips of the brownstones, the Brooklyn skyline a mile away, then, to its left and a mile further on, the downtown Manhattan skyline. The fireworks were launched from between these, so of course we were a bit far away, but the epic scale (and having just seen Transformers) made the whole thing feel very epic. After that, we walked Marco back to the subway, and continued on home. The End.

- ALMANAC SAYS -
Soothe a sunburned face with buttermilk.

- LINK OF THE WEEK -
Transformers: Official Website (toys).

- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
If you were a Transformer, 1) would you be an Autobot or a Decepticon, and 2) what would you transform into?