Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Huzzah! Um, wait. Define "moderate"...

Alcohol stops men being a flop in bed - health - 26 January 2009 - New Scientist


Huzzah! We've got erections!

Men might want to remember a new rhyme: a drink a day keeps erectile dysfunction away.


Despite traditional views about the effects of booze on male performance, new research suggests that moderate drinking actually protects against impotence in the long term – perhaps for the same reason a glass or two of wine a day cuts the odds of suffering from heart disease.


There is good evidence that excessive drinking can hinder sexual performance after a night out – a phenomenon sometimes called "brewer's droop". The effect has been noted for many years: "[Drink] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance," Shakespeare reminds us in Macbeth.


But over longer periods, moderate drinking doesn't seem to be linked to erectile dysfunction, says Kew-Kim Chew, an epidemiologist at the University of West Australia in Nedlands, whose team conducted an anonymous postal survey of 1770 West Australian men.


After accounting for differences due to age, smoking and heart disease – all risk factors for ED – Chew and colleagues found that drinkers experienced rates of impotence 25% to 30% below those of teetotallers.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Well, fuck them. They're idiots.

Obama's Nonbeliever Nod Unsettles Some

By mentioning, for the first time in an inaugural address, the 16.1 percent of Americans who check "no"’ when asked about religion, Obama turned it into the most controversial line in his speech -- praised by The New York Times editorial board and cited by some Christians as evidence that he is a heretic, and in his well-spoken way, a serious threat.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

BSG is Back! Grab Your Hankies!

Could it get any bleaker?

No spoilers, but damn. I'm glad I wasn't drinking during that or I might have killed myself when it was over. Definitely not a BSG Party kind of episode. Unless you're in a suicide cult, of course.

But it was good. It was very, very good.

One down, nine to go.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Goodbye, Khan. Goodbye No. 6



Dr. Girlfriend and I just spent the evening saying goodbye to two friends. To send off Patrick McGoohan, we watched "The Girl Who Was Death" episode 15 of The Prisoner. It was a nice little adventure, ultimately playing out as a bedtime story No. 6 was reading to some of the children of The Village. Then we decided to say goodbye to Ricardo Mantalban by watching "Space Seed" from the first season of Star Trek.

Then it was a choice between Scanners and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Khan won out. Goodbye, gentlemen. You will be missed.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

New Year's Resolutions

To be quite honest, I don't really have a lot of things that I want to resolve to do or not do this year. I'm pretty much on track with my life at the moment, and am enjoying where I'm at.

My "Suffer No Fools" resolution of a few years back has been successful, and there's not a whole lot more I think I need to worry about. We don't eat bad foods. We should probably exercise more, but I don't think that's something that's going get much attention for a while, given our work schedules.

Other than that, there are a couple of things that I do want to take care of.

RESOLUTION #1: Get Organized.

January is being devoted to getting my house in order. I've let things slide for quite a while and the clutter is almost overwhelming. Therefore, January is "Get Organized" Month.

In just the first week I've gotten my bookshelves organized, condensing, making space, and getting things shelved that have been lying around for months. That might not sound like much, but check out my library of books over in the sidebar. I've got way too many, but can't give any up.

Anyway, that's step one. Step two was getting my DVDs in order. That was done yesterday, and has also helped to clear out some of the shelving clutter.

Step three is the big one. Shredding. I've got years of old bills piled up (taking up shelf space) and they need to go. Which means hours of shredding. But once it's done, there's only minor straightening that will be left and I can move on to Resolution #2, while maintaining a certain level of order throughout the year.

RESOLUTION #2: Writing.

I write a lot of reviews. 133 last year, to be exact. That's more than 10 per month, which means at least 2 to 3 per week on average, if my math is right. But it could be wrong.

Regardless, that's a lot of reviews. Especially when you consider that each one is averaging around 800 words. That's approximately 106,000 words over the year. That's the equivalent of a big novel.

So, once the house is in order and Resolution #1 is complete (I've given myself until the end of January to do this, but I should be done before then), then I start cutting back on the reviews and start devoting that writing time to myself.

However, being a veteran of two 3 Day Novels and having tried (and failed) a NaNoWriMo attempt, I think I've gotten a good idea of my current limitations. If I put too big a demand on myself and fall behind, then I'll just quit. I know this.

So I'm going to make the ground rules fairly easy and undemanding.

I'm shooting for a 500 word minimum per day - non-cumulative. Meaning, that if I miss a day, I don't fee obligated to write 1000 words to make it up. That's doable. Very doable. And in six months, if I've kept up with the regimen, then that's around 90,000 words. Again, a good sized novel's worth of writing. It'll not be worth reading, most likely, but it'll be a start. And if the groundwork doesn't get established, then nothing will develop at all.

And really, 500 words is nothing. This post is already 550 words, so there's my daily output met. More than 500 should be a piece of cake once I get rolling.

So that's the plan.

I'm not worrying about my health, since I'm poor and have no insurance and already try to avoid doing anything too bad for my body. I should probably think about drinking less, too, but maybe next year. As it is, I think we'll be cutting back to more wine than beer, and trying to keep it to our weekends as much as possible. But I don't want to make a hard and fast Resolution that I've got to try and stick to and then fail.

I'd rather make these about accomplishing things rather than cutting back on things.

Like I said, maybe next year. We'll see.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Saturday, January 03, 2009

The New Doctor


He looks like the face you'd expect to see on the other side of a Glory Hole. I am not impressed.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Top 10 Movies of 2008 I Haven't Seen Yet

1. Slumdog Millionaire

2. Let the Right One In

3. The Wrestler

4. Quantum of Solace

5. Burn After Reading

6. Tokyo Gore Police

7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

8. Synecdoche, NY

9. In Bruges

10. Che

BONUS 11. Repo: The Genetic Opera

Top 10 Movies of 2008 (in no particular order)

1. The Fall

2. Iron Man

3. Hellboy II: The Golden Army

4. Machine Girl

5. Sukiyaki Western Django

6. Cloverfield

7. Tropic Thunder

8. Red Belt

9. The Mist

10. The Dark Knight

Top 5 TV Shows I've Never Watched, But Probably Should

1. Breaking Bad

2. Mad Men

3. The Shield

4. Pushing Daisies

5. Damages

Top 15 TV Shows of 2008 (in no particular order)

1. Battlestar Galactica

2. Sons of Anarchy

3. Dexter

4. Lost

5. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

6. The Wire

7. Doctor Who

8. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

9. The Office

10. The Sarah Silverman Program

11. Eureka

12. Fringe

13. 10 Items or Less

14. Mentalist

15. IT Crowd