Ren Faire...

...was attended by us yesterday. Rie not only got her hair done, but she dressed up as well. I thought I'd share pictures so I could gloat over how pretty my wife is and make you all jealous that she's mine.









When I'm rich, I'll hire a hair stylist to come in every week and do Rie's hair like that.

Yes!
Yes, yes, yes, and hell yes.

http://amidala.ytmnd.com/



In conclusion, yes.

Sincerely,
YES!!!!

CALIFORNIA, LAND OF FRUITS AND NUTS (AND NOW GAY MARRIAGE)

OR

HOW ELLEN GOT HER MARRIAGE ON

I haven't read the California Supreme Court's decision, but I suspect it's legally correct. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, our great and esteemed Supreme Court of U.S. of A., had this to say about liberty:

Our cases recognize "the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." Our precedents "have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter." These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

(citations omitted). Ah, sweet mystery of life! After reading those wonderful words, people began wondering whether homosexual relations were "matters so fundamentally affecting a person" that the state could not prohibit such relations without violating the "liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment." Lo, and behold, those people were correct! Check out what are Great and All-Knowing Supreme Court said (via Justice Kennedy) next in Lawrence v. Texas:

To say that the issue in Bowers [that's the case that said states can prohibit sodomy] was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse. The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals.

This, as a general rule, should counsel against attempts by the State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects. It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.

Ah, so inspiring!! But wait, if the government can't tell me that one form of expressing my sexuality is better than another (i.e. by prohibiting the practice of it), then why can the government promote one form of sexual relationship (i.e. heterosexual) to the detriment of another? I know that Lawrence had that "proviso" about "an institution the law protects," but that's not fair! I want my form of personal relationship given the same benefits as heterosexual relationships. And why is hetero marriage so great anyway? If one form of finding a "personal bond that is more enduring" is as good as another, marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman should be allowed!!!

Well, fear not, dear reader. The California Supreme Court has heard your cries. And delivered a doozy.

Polygamy here we come!!!!

"Only one other American state recognizes the right the majority announces today. So far, Congress, and virtually every court to consider the issue, has rejected it. Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage —an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law — is no longer valid. California statutes already recognize same-sex unions and grant them all the substantive legal rights this state can bestow. If there is to be a further sea change in the social and legal understanding of marriage itself, that evolution should occur by similar democratic means. The majority forecloses this ordinary democratic process, and, in doing so, oversteps its authority....

"But a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves.Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration. The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will....

"I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference. Though the majority insists otherwise, its pronouncement seriously oversteps the judicial power. The majority purports to apply certain fundamentalprovisions of the state Constitution, but it runs afoul of another just as fundamental— article III, section 3, the separation of powers clause. This clause declares that “[t]he powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial,” and that“[p]ersons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others” except as the Constitution itself specifically provides. (Italics added.)

"History confirms the importance of the judiciary’s constitutional role as a check against majoritarian abuse. Still, courts must use caution when exercising the potentially transformative authority to articulate constitutional rights. Otherwise, judges with limited accountability risk infringing upon our society’s most basic shared premise — the People’s general right, directly or through their chosen legislators, to decide fundamental issues of public policy for themselves.

"Judicial restraint is particularly appropriate where, as here, the claimed constitutional entitlement is of recent conception and challenges the most fundamental assumption about a basic social institution.

"The majority has violated these principles. It simply does not have the right to erase, then recast, the age-old definition of marriage, as virtually all societies have understood it, in order to satisfy its own contemporary notions of equality and justice."

Read Judge Baxter's full opinion here, starting on page 128.

Would F.U. News' resident legal scholar care to comment on the issue?

Take that, EA!

Seriously, before they perfected the intrusive DRM, before they killed the football games genre by making sure no one could make a competing product, and before it became public knowledge that they were buying up small development studios, then forcing them to work 90-hour weeks without overtime, I knew EA was pure evil because each and every one of their games started with half an hour of unskippable company logos. What was the point? They thought I might have forgotten who to blame wrote the game since the last time it crashed to the Windows desktop?

Pop Quiz: C++

What is special about this function?

inline void foo(DWORD &a, DWORD &b)
{
    if( a != b ) a ^= b ^= a ^= b;
}

The first correct answer earns an imaginary bag of marshmallows!

Summer Movie Preemptive Roundup.
I've done Summer Movie Recaps in the past. This year, I thought I'd also do a forecast using the Reviewinator to determine which movies are worth seeing. I know it's a little late, since the summer movie season started over a week ago, but that's how I roll. Deal.

May 2nd

Iron Man
Cool Superhero (weight 5): 10
Cool Costume (weight 3): 10
Cool Special Effects/Explosions (weight 5): 10
Interesting source material (weight 4): 6
Trailer: Double Wide (weight 3): 7
Adjustment factor for ratio of bad to good superhero movies (weight 2): 5
--------------------
Overall rating: 8.41
Having seen this movie already, I can already tell you GO SEE IT! It wasn't one I was particularly interested in, having no familiarity with the source material, but when every single geek on teh interwebs started proclaiming it as teh best comic book movie evar, I had to check it out.

See it? Yes


May 9th

Speed Racer
Good directors! Haha! (weight 5): 5
Style! Haha! (weight 3): 9
Cool special effects! Haha! (weight 5): 9
Trailer: Single Wide! Haha! (weight 3): 5
Fact that it is based on cheesy anime! Haha! (weight -3): 7
--------------------
Overall rating! Haha!: 4.79
This one gets a big fat "Meh". The Wachowski's are... I dunno. The Matrix was good, and I think that I'm the only person on the planet that liked its two sequels. V for Vendetta was a heavy-handed, agenda-ridden piece of fecal matter—the debating equivalent of making your point by hitting your opponent over the head with a mallet with your thesis written on it—whose protagonist was a terrorist.

See it? No


May 16th

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Good source material (weight 5): 10
Sequel adjustment factor* (weight 4): 9
Take that, Philip Pullman (weight 5): 10
Fact that they need to make enough money on these to at least get to A Horse and his Boy, which was my favorite of the series, and I'm still bitter that the BBC productions stopped with The Silver Chair (weight 5): 10
Come on, it's frakking Chronicles of Narnia! I still have to convince you to see it? (weight 5): 10
--------------------
Overall rating: 9.83
*This is a complicated factor taking into account the quality of the previous movies in the franchise, whether or not it's the same writers/director as previous installments, and the likelihood that they're just cashing in.

Prince Caspian is the one Narnia book that I never read. I got bored of it before I could get through it, and the BBC production, while good, was IMO the weakest of the four. The trailer makes it look like it's going to be very exciting though.

See it? Yes


May 22nd

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Dum dada dum. Dum dadadada dum (weight 4): 10
George Lucas Presents (weight 5): 10
A Steven Spielberg Film (weight 5): 10
Starring Harrison Ford (weight 5): 10
Two words: INDIANA JONES (weight 5): 11
Yeah yeah, Shia LaBeouf, Marian Ravenwood, Cate Blanchett etc. etc. (weight 1): 10
--------------------
Overall rating: 10.20
I know I'm supposed to be extremely excited about this one, or so the reviewinator tells me, but there's some small part of me that is very hesitant about this and I'm not sure why. Despite the fact that I love all the Star Wars movies and despite the fact that I haven't seen a Spielberg film I didn't like (yes, that includes 1941 and Munich), I'm still approaching Indy 4 with reservations. I don't know why. I think it's because I don't think it can be better than Last Crusade, my favorite of the bunch, which I think was a perfectly good ending to the trilogy. I guess I really don't see the need to make another one so many years later to tack on the end of a series which is already very good. Plus, I don't want to listen to the hordes of internet fanboys screaming about how George Lucas has ruined their childhood again, which you know is going to happen, no matter how good the movie is.

See it? Hell, yes.


May 30th

Sex and the City: The Movie
Sarah Jessica Parker (weight -5): 10
Kim Cattrall (weight -5): 10
Kristin Davis (weight -5): 10
Cynthia Nixon (weight -5): 10
Oh yeah, it's Sex and the City (weight -5): 10
--------------------
Overall rating: -10.00
I think Darth Vader sums it up best.
Whale Biologist Tom Adams has mentioned the chorus of "Yes's", sung to the climax of the 1812 overture in response to a leather-clad Natalie Portman asking us if we could live a lie. What would be the best music to sing a chorus of "No's" to? The Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem?

See it? Only if you are out of your ever-loving mind.


June 6th

You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Adam Sandler. 'Nuff said (weight -3): 0
--------------------
Overall rating: 0.00
Ok, the guys been in exactly one good movie: The Wedding Singer. He, along with Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Will Ferrel, need to crawl into a cave and die.

See it? Only if you want to lower your IQ by about 20 points.


June 13th

The Happening
M. Night Shyamalan. 'Nuff said. (weight 5): 9
--------------------
Overall rating: 9.00
I am an M. Night fanboy (meaning: I liked The Village and Lady in the Water). Slap his name on a movie and I'll be there like... something that is strongly attracted to something else.

See it? Yes

The Incredible Hulk
Superhero (weight 5): 8
Interesting source material (weight 4): 6
Comic book adjustment factor (weight 2): 5
Franchise adjustment factor (weight 4): 5
Marvel adjustment factor (weight 2): 9
Trailer: Double Wide (weight 3): 7
--------------------
Overall rating: 6.65
It's your call on this one. There isn't much going for it. But one thing that's important to note is that Marvel, tired of getting screwed with crappy comic book movies, like X3 and the first Fantastic 4 movie, has set up their own movie studio so they can do them right. The studio's first production was Iron Man, which was very good. The Incredible Hulk is next, so who knows?

See it? Yes, matinee


June 20th

Get Smart
Source material (weight 5): 7
Cast (weight 4): 8
Trailer: Single Wide, with a porch (weight 3): 6
Recent-trend-of-turning-old-TV-shows-into-movies adjustment factor (weight 2): 3
--------------------
Overall rating: 6.50
This is also sort of a "meh". None of the recent TV-show-to-movies have been any good, but this one looks more promising. Steve Carell is funny, Anne Hathaway is pretty, I'll probably see it at some point, on DVD if nothing else.

See it? Maybe matinee


June 27th

Wall-E
Pixar (weight 5): 10
Cute Robot (weight 5): 10
Pixar (weight 5): 10
Trailer: Triple Wide, with a porch (weight 5): 10
Did I mention the fact that it's Pixar (weight 5): 10
--------------------
Overall rating: 10.00
Come one here, people. Just the fact that "Pixar" is stamped at the beginning should make you want to see it, regardless of what it is about. They shouldn't even need to show a trailer, or provide any movie details whatsoever. All they should need to do is have a Dublin Generics-brand movie poster (bright yellow with big, black, block letters, for those of you not in the know) stating "PIXAR'S NEXT MOVIE: JUNE 27TH" and you should line up to see it.

That aside, the teaser trailer tells you next to nothing about the movie, and it still looks fantastic.

See it? For the love of all that is good and sweet in Oden's beard, YES


July 2nd

Hancock
Will Smith (weight 4): 9
Cool Superhero (weight 5): 9
Trailer: Double Wide, with a porch (weight 3): 8
--------------------
Overall rating: 8.75
Will Smith can brings the funnies. Will Smith can brings the cools. Will Smith can brings the actions. Will Smith can bring the dramas. In this case, it looks like he's going for three of the four.

See it? Yes


July 11th

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Big red guy. About 7 feet tall. Can't miss him. (weight 4): 9
Fish guy (weight 3): 7
Moderately hot girl. You know the kind that are only sort of hot, so they don't mess around with other guys. (weight 3): 7
Trailer: Double Wide (weight 3): 7
"Visionary" Director. He must be because it said so in the trailer! (weight 5): 9
Franchise adjustment factor (weight 4): 8
--------------------
Overall rating: 8.00
This must be a horrible, horrible year for people who don't like comic book movies.

See it? Yes

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
The Other Indiana Jones in 3D! (weight 3): 8
Walden Media in 3D! (weight 3): 8
It's in 3D in 3D! (weight 2): 9
Trailer: Single wide, with a porch in 3D! (weight 4): 6
--------------------
Overall rating: 7.50
I object to this movie in that it teaches kids bad science about what's at the center of the Earth. Even still, it will probably be more realistic than The Core.

See it? Yes, matinee


July 18th

The Dark Knight
Cool Superhero (weight 5): 10
Cool Costume (weight 3): 10
Cool Source material (weight 4): 10
Cast (weight 4): 10
Trailer: Triple Wide, with a porch (weight 3): 10
Franchise Adjustment Factor (weight 4): 9
--------------------
Overall rating: 9.83
Ok, aside from Indiana Jones, Prince Caspian, Iron Man, and Wall-E, this is the movie of the summer. Batman Begins is my new gold standard for comic book movies. But as great as it was, its one, tiny, niggling little flaw was Katie "Dawson's Creek" Holmes. They got rid of her in this one.

See it? Batman is a ninja. You can only see him if he wants you to see him, and even then, only if you squint your eyes and turn your head sideways (in which case he looks like a bunny).


July 25th

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The Truth is Out There (weight 5): 9
Franchise Adjustment Factor (weight 4): 8
--------------------
Overall rating: 8.56
I really didn't know how to Reviewinate this one. I haven't seen the first X-Files movie, and I didn't watch the show until the poorly-received final season. But I'll still probably see this one anyways.

See it? Yes, matinee


August 1st
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
The Other Indiana Jones (weight 3): 8
The Very Hot Rachel Weisz (weight 1): 0
Franchise Adjustment Factor (weight 4): 8
--------------------
Overall rating: 7.00
Did I mention Rachel Weisz isn't in it? Boo.

See it? Yes, matinee


August 8th

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Remember the Star Trek VI soundtrack? Remember how cool it was? Remember how we had never heard of the guy who wrote the music? Well, he wrote the music for the first SotTP. But not this one. (weight 0): 0
--------------------
Overall rating: 0.0
Use this weekend to catch up on previous releases, if you've fallen behind.

See it? Erm, no


August 15th

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Star War— wait, what? There's a new Star Wars movie? (weight 5): 12
CG— It's in CG? (weight 4): 10
Star Wars in CG— Just so I understand you, there's a new Star Wars movie coming out, and it's in CG, and I hadn't heard about it before now? (weight 5): 10
The fact that this is just the beginning of a brand-new Star Wars TV series that will be on cartoon network (weight 5): 10
Squee! *Dies* (weight 5): 10
--------------------
Overall rating: 10.42
I have no idea how this one snuck up on me. I only found out about it by accident when I happened to turn on the TV about an hour before the "world exclusive" trailer on Cartoon Network. I had heard about the CG series this year, followed by the live action series next year, but I had no idea they were leading it off with a CG movie.

See it? Are you insane? You have to ask?


August 22nd: The end of the season. You made it! Relax and stay at home for once.

And there you have it. The Summer Movie Season That Would Not Die. Assuming $11 for full-price, and $9 for matinee, which is what they're charging at the Spectrum, the communist extortionists, this summer will cost The Murloc and me $288 on movie tickets alone, not including concessions.


Other releases of note, later this year.

October 17th
Max Payne. They're making a movie out of my favorite under-rated video game franchise? Very nice. But can you get around to making Max Payne 3, please? Especially interesting is that Mila Kunis (voice of Meg Griffin on Family Guy) is playing the hot assassin babe Mona Sax. Interesting in that Mona is the complete opposite of Meg.

November 21st
Here, I'll hum the theme song and see if you can guess what it is: dum da da dum da dumm dumm / dum da da dumm dum dummm / dum dumm da da dumm dum dumm dum dumm da da dumm da da dumm dum dumm. Did you get it? I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with Mary Water. This November the third to last movie in the franchise comes out, based on the second to last book. It's the third to last, after the exciting announcement that they'll be splitting the seventh book into two movies, not wanting to leave anything out.

Customer Service Representative: "Maintenance will be done in about 2 hours."
Customer: "Is that 2 hours where you are at? Or 2 hours where I am at?"

Hey, it's a relevant question. If where he is at is traveling very close to the speed of light relative to where we are at, 2 hours for us is a couple second for him, right?