microburst.

What's the last number?

Had a wonderful little conversation with my 8-year-old nephew while driving around running errands today.  Somehow we started talking about numbers, and he mentioned ‘infinity’ without really knowing what it meant.  We got into a whole debate about what ‘the last number’ is, wherein I kept pointing out that you could always just add one to that number and get a new ‘last number.’

It was great to listen to him puzzle it all out.  Over the course of the conversation, we touched on Pi, negative numbers, the concept of zero (‘is zero the first number or is one the first number?’), and even verged on modular arithmetic and how computers can only count a finite set of numbers.

Oh, just read the whole thing...

Gads, just go read all of Mr. Morrison’s thoughts on The Dark Knight.  He lays down, in his own special way, a bunch of the thoughts I’d had.  Particularly the stuff about how it seems to get at the essence of all the great Batman stories and the characters within them.

Plus, he got to watch it while sitting next to David Beckham and family, which just amuses me to NO END.

He also talks about the upcoming Watchmen film and a bunch of totally crazy Grant Morrison type stuff.

Overloaded with the awesomeness.

So, The Dark Knight was so good that my friend Shane and I had trouble even talking coherently about it afterwards.  We babbled and gushed and uttered, “dude, that was awesome” like a couple of sad Beevis and Butthead soundalikes.

I managed to tweet stupidly “So that was AWESOME. Can I see it again tomorrow?” while walking out of the theater.

When I got home, I promptly changed my Facebook status to “Mark is overloaded with the awesomeness. Like OMG!”

So, are you having trouble telling I’m a grownup?  I know I am.

Anyway, the only coherent thoughts I’ve really been able to get down about it so far are in the form of the following response to my wife’s sister, who thought the film “wasn’t that great.”

So, yeah, I LOVED it. I thought it was a fantastic piece of work with tons of depth, great story, and excellent performances. Intricate, to say the least, and worthy of multiple viewings. And also just a really good comic book movie for a big comic book nerd like me.

Yup, that’s the best I can do right now.

But, you know, if you’re wondering….that new Batman movie is, like, totally AWESOME.

heathaze days

Went for a short walk in the blastfurnace heat at lunch today.

Walking back, I found myself thinking about summers with family in Vail, Colorado as a kid.  Bike rides and hikes in the hot, dry air among the scrubby, dry vegetation; everything dry, dry, dry except for the creek by our condo.  Mad cicadas always buzzing along the trails (which suddenly makes me realize that I almost never hear them down here on the front range).

Of course, in the mountains the heathaze days are followed by cool nights, a little break…

ripping it up, starting again...

I was using Tumblr as an aggregator.

flickr, last.fm, twitter…all getting sucked in here.

That was dumb, I’ve decided.

Also:  that’s what friendfeed is for, right?

And I wasn’t posting anything else of note here.  So, I’m ripping up those plans, starting again, seeing if I can use this the way the internet gods intended.

Something about the midsummer heat makes me like woozy countrified indie rock. I can’t help it.

Tried to teach Mia the words to ‘Eardrum Buzz’ while driving to the library with some minor success.

Just got polled by Rasmussen Reports, which was actually a rather interesting experience.

New TVOTR album announced for September. Yay and stuff!