In "Photoshopping"

As someone who is recently and unwillingly single, the pictures that remove a guy from the picture without a trace make me very sad inside.

In "Quote from Honda Civic driver: "She hit ME"."

She didn't. Actually... she did. And had she not, she might've made it around him.

In "Curious LA Eatin' George"

going to be in Los Angeles...I don't plan to get a car Did you forget what city you were going to? ;) Actually there's quite a bit downtown, and close to there. At least for lunching, there are a couple of food courts downtown. I usually end up at 7th+Fig, which is exactly where you'd think it would be. I assume you're at the H. Inn at Olympic & Fig, so that's 3 blocks. There's also a food court under Macy's at 8th & hope, and under the arco/bofa towers at 5th & flower. During the day you can also use the DASH buses around downtown. Despite some combination of living and working downtown for 4 years, I've never used them - but I hear they're good. And I know they're cheap. I'd think DASHing over to little tokyo would be the best bet for more interesting food - tons of japanese and chinese down there, including my favorite sushi place ever. Nighttime downtown is harder. There's very little between "crap" and "nice restaurant", especially if you're not driving. DASH stops running relatively early, so getting to little tokyo might be tough. But if you can get over there, and you like sushi, don't miss Sushi Gen, hidden away in Honda Plaza on 2nd and Alameda. Closer to where you are for good dinner out is Nick & Stef's, a pretty yummy steak place, and Cafe Pinot, your basic foofy place. Both are run by the Patina Group, and their website will of course have more info.

In "Chen Guangcheng was beat yesterday."

That reminds me of Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju. Me too. Except I couldn't remember what it was called. Thanks! ...like every (non martial-arts based) Chinese movie I've seen, it's rather depressing.

In "I can see the music!"

"The trick is to examine the physical construction of the recording and look at the relative playing time of each one of the movements or separations on the recording" DJs do that ALL THE TIME. I often figure out which track is which on a given record by the patterns on it. I couldn't name an arbitrary record based on its grooves, but it's a useful datapoint when going through my own crate. Or when you just don't know your own records well enough and want something without any big breakdowns - those are easy to see. It's also useful while the record is playing. You can see where a beat is going to drop off, or come back in, or if there's going to be a long outro that shouldn't be played unlayered. It's also one of the big reasons CD DJing never appealed to me very much - just not as much connection to the music that's playing.

In "Joss Whedon on How He Wouldn't Have Made "X-Men 3""

I find it hard to figure out how nerds end up hating firefly. which isn't to say I don't think it's possible. i just can't grok it. I was resistent to watching it when it aired - I saw one episode and was left confused and going "cowboys, eh?". And, well, yeah - Whedon fans are scary. I once was a sound tech guy at a buffy related fundraiser for something whoooooboy that was weird. But I grabbed the whole season because I was bored, and after the first couple of episodes really liked it. My girlfriend, who was most attracted to the "it's kinda like bebop" aspect, but otherwise wasn't interested, ended up really liking it, too. I would've loved to see the characters developed more, and of course the "oooh mysterious stuff" aspects. But mostly I really did end up attached to the characters and ship.

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