Better than Reality

CNN has a pre-story (i.e. a story about news that hasn’t happened yet, and for that matter won’t really be news when it does) about the top 100 movie quotes. I’d like to nominate Trinity’s quote when she shoots the agent during the rescue of Morpheus:

Dodge this.

I think somebody needs to point out to the AFI that the line “Houston, we have a problem” was kinda by Tom Hanks, but was really by Jack Swaggert (and I believe is actually “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”

Update: Yes, I know Trillian is an IM client, not a character in The Matrix. Honestly.

The thin polycotton line

Sometime in the last week our household passed a significant threshold. Claire had commented on several ocassions (and I think you know what I mean when I say ‘several’) that she didn’t have enough clothes. At the weekend, in part to rectify this, we hit the mall for a good Anglo-American shopping spree (i.e. low in price, high in volume). Thus it was, at the start of the week, that Claire complained that she didn’t know what to wear because she had too much to choose from.

I fear that the line between these two states is vanishingly small, in fact so small as to display quantum physics-like properties, in that the act of observation causes it to change. Certainly we have no way of knowing when we are at the line, only when we have passed it. Unfortunately I suspect it does not have one of the key characteristics of quantum physics, namely the quanta. While light can only present itself in discreet units, the demarcation line for too much or not enough is measured in fractions. For example, were we hovering on the insufficient side of the line, the purchase of a short-sleeved T-shirt may still leave us lagging our desired goal, while the accrual of the same T-shirt with long sleeves would push us beyond the mark. Staying with our physics theme, I suspect further that the apparel boundary exhibits signs of radioactive decay; what yesterday was a surfeit of choice becomes tomorrow’s barren wasteland of sartorial options.

Naturally I have a solution for this problem: The regular purchase of small quantities of extremely skimpy foundationwear. Allowing for very fine adjustments of our position (see the rich bounty of double entendres I leave for you to pick up!) relative to the feast/famine fashion line, but regular top-ups will help keep us there over time. You may easily think I have my own motives for such an arrangement, but I hope that reflection on the argument laid out above will convince you that I am thinking only of my dear spouse’s emotional wellbeing.

And I leave you with a new phrase for the fashion physicists out there: The Apparel Boundary, being that point at which one has sufficient clothing to make a suitable choice for all ocassions, while not so much as to overwhelm.

A thing of beauty

For those of you who doubted that I would pull the trigger and drop the cash….[[image:imac.jpg:Picture of a beautiful baby 17″ Superdrive-equipped iMac:center:0]]The cash is dropped, the trigger pulled, and she is mine.

I am complete.

CNN Priorities

Having seen this:[[image:cnn.jpg:Finger next to the pulse:center:0]]I sent the following to CNN:

We are actively waging war in Iraq, with thousands of US soldiers putting their lives on the line *right now* in Falluja, and the website’s top story is that some guy who may have killed his wife is about to be sentenced. Really? That’s honestly the most important thing going on? The murder of one spouse (or boy/girlfriend) by another is something that happens on average 3 or 4 times per day in the US, whereas we rarely get more than 1 or 2 wars per day, but the top story is a rather unpleasant example of the sadly routine, rather than a battle that could help determine the security of the entire Middle East (and 300 million people here)?