Those crazy Iranians . . .

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as “pizzas” which will now be known as “elastic loaves,” state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.

The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. The government is less sensitive about Arabic words, because the Quran is written in Arabic.

Among other changes, a “chat” will become a “short talk” and a “cabin” will be renamed a “small room,” according to official Web site of the academy.

An elastic loaf with round meat patties sounds awesome right now. I’m so hungry.

Via the Associated Press.

JAB

According to People magazine, Lance Bass is saying “Bye Bye Bye” to his heterosexual status:

Lance Bass, band member of ‘N Sync, says he’s gay and in a “very stable” relationship with a reality show star.

Bass, who formed ‘N Sync with Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick, tells People magazine that he didn’t earlier disclose his sexuality because he didn’t want to affect the group’s popularity.

“I knew that I was in this popular band and I had four other guys’ careers in my hand, and I knew that if I ever acted on it or even said (that I was gay), it would overpower everything,” he tells the magazine.

My question is, is anyone surprised by this revelation? Look at the guy, for Christ’s sake:

I remember, back in the day, reading headlines on the covers of various tabloids gossiping that “so-and-so of ‘N Sync is gay,” “Britney Spears is a ho-bag,” and “Rob Schneider is an actor of questionable taste.” Thankfully at least only one of those was true.

Makes you wonder, though, if Lance ever told his band mates. Five guys, touring, living in close quarters . . . hard to believe they’d miss the occasional illicit midnight “rendezvous” that Lance’s “friends” might make. Or maybe they only suspected.

JOEY: Yo, dogg, I was wondering’ — don’t Lance look a little, I dunno, too pretty for a dude?

JUSTIN: My hair’s pretty.

CHRIS: I’m not pretty. I’m not anything . . . . I wish I had talent.

JC: Anyway . . . yeah, I think you’re right, man. I bet if any of us turned out to be gay — not that we are, ’cause we all love bitches and shit — but yeah, it’d be Lance.

Lance enters the room, softly singing to himself “It’s Gonna Be Me.”

LANCE: Hi guys! Whatcha up to?

Everyone stares at him.

JOEY (whispering to JC): That shit is spooky.

Now might be the apropos time to add that I have nothing against someone, even Lance Bass, being gay. I’m more offended that some dude would actually want to date the man. I mean . . . it’s Lance Bass. Eww . . . . Seriously — being gay is no excuse for having poor taste in partners.

JAB

Where, oh where to begin . . . ? Should I first discuss the pool party, or the car accident?

I think I’ll begin with the former.

Senor Ryan had a pool party Thursday that he participated in for about two hours. At the 4th of July gathering it was suggested we have a drunken pool party early, like at 5 pm, so we could get hammered to our hearts’ content and perhaps finish drinking early enough so that we wouldn’t be too hung over come morning. This plan succeeded . . . for the most part. All the usual suspects were there, as were a whole lot spirits (I brought the rum). We connived to get Krystel drunk, to which she graciously acquiesced after a few hours, despite protestations of not being drunk. We did rum shots, and drank girly beer, and turned the ordinary pool into an unholy, whirlpool. By the end of the night I was very tired.

I’m not too sure what happened with Ryan. One minute he was merrily drinking and playing in the pool, then the next he was puking over the deck’s railing into some bushes. Then he was merrily drinking and frolicking in the pool again, and then ten minutes later he was laying on the floor in his basement, legs partially in the bathroom, like a mighty, albeit mortally wounded Kraken. ‘Tis a shame, too — Ryan, you hosted one hell of a party. The rest of the night is sort of a blur: I drank, played in the pool, and then Jason gave me a ride home, since I was in no condition to drive. (Though I’m sure I would have handled the ‘Am magnificently.)

And then today I got in a car accident in front of Wright-Patt on the way to Fairborn.

A quick summary: It was a five car pile-up, no one was seriously hurt, Jason was driving, he wasn’t at fault, but his Escort was mangled beyond repair. Frankly we got off lucky, as one of the base’s SPs attested. If we’d been going faster or if there were a more diabolical confluence of events, things could have turned out much worse. I only have a fairly large seatbelt burn on my bicep, and I kinda feel like I spent fifteen minutes in a tumble dryer, but otherwise I’m good. Jason, though understandably upset about the loss of his car, is also okay, aside from also probably feeling like he spent too much time headbanging at a Swallowing Shit show.

There was plenty of time for me to take some pictures with my phone, as we sat on the side of the road in the grass for about two hours while police reports were filed and vehicles were shorn from other vehicles they had no business being attached to. Here’s Jason’s Escort and the Cadillac it tried to mount after we were smashed into from behind by a sixteen-year-old girl; here’s the tow truck guys trying to figure out how to separate the two; and here’s the convoy of trucks with their respective cars in tow. Fun times.

Thankfully, my evening ended on a better note. I participated in a psychology test where I got to make up crazy stories about events depicted in various, old-timey photos, and watched an episode of ‘Alias’ with a hilarious commentary turned on. Exciting, eh? As Sarah is wont to say on occasion, I do live the life of James Bond.

JAB

Holyfuckingshit:

Producer-writer Dean Devlin confirmed today at the San Diego Comic-Con that he is in talks with MGM Studios to shoot parts two and three to his original 1994 sci-fi film Stargate, which starred Kurt Russell and James Spader.

“We’ve always envisioned it as a trilogy,” Devlin added later when talking directly to the press about the sequels. “‘Stargate’ was also supposed to be the first part of three. We had written all three, not the script, but the story, when we did the first one and due to the nature of how that film got made, and how MGM has changed so many times, and their commitment to doing the series, they’ve been very reluctant to do the movie. Well, under this new regime we’ve been in discussions with them and basically said, ‘Look, one doesn’t have to hurt the other. The series is doing great. Fans love the series, so much that it got a sequel. They may even be doing a third spinoff they’re talking about. So it’s alive, well and in good shape. But it would be great to finish telling the story we set out to tell 12 years ago.”

So would he get Kurt Russell and James Spader back? He said, “Absolutely.” Roland Emmerich? “Roland would absolutely be involved in it, whether or not he directs it will really depends on how much money I raise to make the picture.” (laughs)

Devlin talked more about the story throughout the three films. “Our first movie was only trying to tap into Egyptian mythology. The second was to move into other mythologies. Then the third was to realize that all mythologies are actually tied together with a common thread that we haven’t recognized before. So if you make it through all three, hopefully we’re tying up all kinds of mysteries on our planet that makes one cohesive story. My hope is that the series could live as beginning when the third movie ends.”

What’s weird is I was just thinking yesterday how I want to sit down and rewatch this movie sometime. See, Stargate is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies. It’s got everything a cool movie should have: Nifty premise, engaging story, reasonably good actors, and a kick-ass score.

I know there are a number of people out there who aren’t as excited about this news as I. Many (like every film critic alive) didn’t like the movie, or if they did, they now worship the TV show over the movie. Personally, I thought the TV show is pretty entertaining, but lacks some of the grit and seriousness found in the movie. (Richard Dean Anderson makes a hell of a Jack O’Neill, but Kurt Russell is the shit.) Two more movies with the original cast would be fantastic.

Fucking awesome.

JAB

I went with Brandon and Krystel yesterday to COSI, where we “Explored Science and Discovered Fun!” There’s a Star Wars exhibit there that we were interested in, and since COSI is pretty interesting anyway, we made a date of it. I hadn’t been to COSI since right after graduating high school, I think, when I went with Nate and we participated in this awesome treasure hunt-thing, ala Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider.

Upon entering the building yesterday the first thing that struck me was: “Why are there so many fucking kids around? It’s motherfucking summer! They should be at the pool and the mall and the Oregon District!” Then I backhanded a kid running by and sent him to the ground. Seriously though — there were too many little annoying kids for my taste.

The Star Wars bit was okay, but not quite what I was hoping for. There were a number of props and costumes from the movies, which were pretty cool, and several interactive exhibits on robotics and space travel. We sat through a boring presentation on robotics featuring C-3PO, a bunch of lame, modern robots that do things like “fix sewer pipes” and “ingest nuclear waste,” and a video representation of some condescending robotics expert-lady. This supposedly took place in a miniature “sandcrawler” that in actuality was a plywood tetrahedron painted brown.

The rest of COSI was pretty cool. We wandered through a bunch of crowded exhibits, testing some of the interactive stuff. Krystel and I tried to heft Brandon using a pulley system, but alas, it was rough going. We made little hovercraft out of LEGOs and magnets. I got incredibly frustrated when I couldn’t make mine float down the tracks properly. But Brandon could, that fucker. In the Death exhibit, we also used a computer to predict how we’d look when we’re old. Guess what: I’m gonna be wrinkly like a raisin when I’m old; who’d've thunk it. While we were waiting in line, there was a video playing nearby that consisted of old people relating how they found out they had cancer, and what their feelings were on their imminent deaths. For some reason, the subjects weren’t very cheery or enthusiastic. A little girl summed the video up best: “Well that’s depressing.” They also had real fetuses on display, which I was horrified to discover were actually only half a fetus.

My favorite exhibit had to have been the one on the ocean. Set up to look like some Atlantean cave, there were pools of water arrayed on the floor with the smaller exhibits placed throughout. This kick-ass stone globe was awesome, and I really wanted it for my front yard. A gigantic statue of Poseidon also glared down at us from behind his “mythical playground.” (I wanted Poseidon in my backyard, so he could glare down at my neighbors from behind my non-mythical privacy fence.) Another part of the exhibit featured a mini submarine you could enter, but I didn’t go in it because there were too many of those bastard children in line, and we were slightly pressed for time, since we’d to schedule a time to visit the Star Wars exhibit.

Huh. I wonder if COSI would let me live in their Ocean exhibit? I could easily be a creepy, grizzled tour guide, perpetually smelling of rum and chomping on a wooden pipe. I’d get in the wee little ones’ faces and sneer, “So . . . ye’re interested in the oceans, are ye? Well, I can tell ye a few things about the sea . . . like that it kills the ones ye love the most, like yer mothers and fathers!” And they would cry. They would flee and they would cry.

JAB

Never got around to posting about the last few days of the trip. A combination of busyness and laziness, methinks.

A few highlights:

Finally going up into the Arch. Though I wasn’t too excited at first, it was pretty damn neat. As Allan commented on a recent entry, the mode of transport was like something out of a Stanley Kubrick film. Five people are jammed into this little egg-shaped pod. Your knees are pressed against some stranger’s, and the metal pod is ungodly hot as it traverses the Arch. You get out at the top and step into a narrow walkway lined with window slits and crowded with a hundred or so people. There you can stare down at the mortals below and take pictures. Then you reenter the pods and travel back down. If you ever find yourself in St. Louis, I recommend visiting the Arch. It’s worth it.

Visiting the Meremac Caverns. This was nothing like I was expecting, and not in the good way either. I assumed you’d go to the caverns and explore some carefully selected areas on your own, with the occasional guide interspersed throughout. This assumption was incorrect, thus reinforcing the whole “when you assume. . .” axiom. Instead you gather into a hundred-plus group and are led by two guides on a merry hour-and-a-half journey into the dark depths of outer-St. Louis. Old people, people in wheelchairs, people with small children are nothing but a hindrance on the tour. If it was, say, ten people per group, the tour would only be thirty, maybe forty minutes long. All of the people I just mentioned should be lumped into their own group — called the Deadites, ’cause I wished several times that the ones in my tour group were dead. The Caverns themselves were fairly interesting, but between my mom getting antsy and my annoyance with my fellow man, their impact was lessened.

“Standing on the Shores of Hell” or “Going to Six Flags.” I like roller coasters, I like the heat — I do not like the two together. ‘Nuff said.

We took pictures while we were gone, a rarity for my family. Once I go get the camera from Lindsey I’ll be sure to post some of the more interesting ones (like the pods) in a future entry.

Finally, I’d just like to add that I’m glad to be home. This vacation wasn’t very long, but it was just right. I’ve got lots to keep me busy — like visiting COSI and getting hammered — till I go back to work on Monday.

I’m going to go get something to eat now, as I have eaten anything since around 12:30. I’ve been meaning to, but stuff just kept coming up. You know how it is.

JAB

Day two finds us one aborted attempt later to ascend the arch. We got there ’round 9:30 am, and stood in line for over an hour to get tickets. But they weren’t selling tickets since the two trams that take you up into the arch were broken. After some time one finally got up and running, so we were able to purchase tickets. But as
only one tram was working, the delay was about forty minutes before our time to board. There’s a pretty neat Lewis and Clark pseudo-exhibit in the lobby of the arch. One wall consists of a large panorama detailing their journey along the Missouri, with excerpts from Messrs. Lewis and Clark’s journals interspersed. I’ve always been fascinated with that expedition, so I found the entire exhibit to be pretty cool. 11:20 at least neared, so we headed back to the boarding area, ready to ride the tram up into the heavens.

Until we overheard one of the arch employees tell another tourist that “both trams are currently down, and will probably be for the rest of the day.” Uttering sighs of defeat, my party and I quickly rushed over to the desk and had our money refunded, right before an announcement was made on the overhead speakers informing the crowd at large about the malfunctions. Immediately people swarmed like locusts upon the ticket counters to get refunds. But by then we were on our way out.

That little bit of annoyance behind us, we continued on to the next leg of our journey: taking the train to Union Station. (I kept referring to it as monorail — despite the fact that it clearly was not one — and even sang the song, but sadly no one else got it.) Long story short, it was neat but a little on the boring side. There’s really nothing to do there except eat and visit some t-shirt stores and other assorted tourist-y crap that held no interest for me. Lindsey got some stuff for a friend’s birthday and I got tasty Chinese food, so I guess it wasn’t a complete waste.

Back to the room we went for some afternoon relaxing. I again went out to the pool and read for a while, and tried not to look at the girls basketball team made up of seventeen year olds dressed in bikinis. I succeeded . . . mostly.

The highlight of the evening — and this shows just how big of a geek I am — was visiting the Book House, a kick-ass used book store. I’ve never before been in one like it: it’s a Victorian, three-story house, and the walls are lined to the ceiling with books. There sci-fi collection is rather extensive, and I found several books I’ve
been looking for. If you’re really into some of the older (70s, 80s, and earlier) stuff, it would really be awesome, since that’s what the Book House has a lot of. I’m trying to go back and read some of the more “classic” science fiction that’s out there (like Neuromancer), so it was worthwhile for me.

It’s time for me to read for a little bit before going to bed. Tomorrow we’re going to undertake another attempt at the arch, so we’ll see how that goes. We purchased tickets online tonight, so at least we don’t have to wait in line again. I believe a visit to some nearby caverns is also on the agenda. My mom is deathly afraid of heights and water, so I’m curious to see how she handles being a considerable distance beneath the Earth’s surface. Should be interesting . . . .

JAB

Well, we made it to St. Louis in one piece. The trip down, thankfully, was uneventful. I slept and finished a book (Chris Roberson’s Paragaea). Good times.

After getting here we dicked around the area for a while, including stopping at some mall so my mother and sister could get their shopping fix attended to. Then we checked into our hotel, which is pretty nice. Things have been made easier by us having separate rooms that are adjoined to each other. Lindsey’s and mine has two double beds, the parents has one king. Makes it so we aren’t all sitting on top of each other, but I’m sure by the end of the trip I will be ready to smother Lindsey.

I sat out by the pool for a while, enjoying the hot weather and starting another book (William Gibson’s Neuromancer). It’s kind of weird reading a noirish book about computers and cyberspace (fun fact: Gibson coined the term) set in an atmospheric and dark future while sitting by the pool on a bright and sunny day.

Very antithetical. I also had the pleasure of getting pissed off at fucktard kids and their even bigger fucktard parents. Swear to god, never have I so desperately wanted a bucket of rocks by my side to “handle” the situation than I did right then. Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve wanted to before. Quite a few times, actually. But that doesn’t diminish just how aggravated I was.

About that time, I developed a bad headcahe (what a coincidence), which lingered throughout dinner until the evening. It’s actually gone now, I just realized. I’ve been distracted by writing, so I didn’t notice. (I didn’t feel like being cooped up in the room so I grabbed lappy and went into this little breakfast area by the pool. Wrote a thousand words or so in a story, and checked my mail since the hotel has its own wireless network.)

I think I’m going to head back to the room and read some more of my book, since the headache has disappeared. Tomorrow we’re going downtown to go up into the Arch and do other shit. Should be interesting.

JAB

There’s been an update over at the Novelogue, bascially telling you that I’ve cast aside WordPress for Movable Type and my reasons for doing so. Let’s just say it was for a pretty cool and fortuitously timed occurence.

Also, since I’m not sure if I’ll be posting after this, let me mentionthat I’ll be in St. Louis from Friday through Tuesday or Wednesday for a much needed vacation. I plan on reading many science fiction novels while soaking up the sun (like in that Sheryl Crow song), doing some writing, and hitting on women. Should be fun.

Bon voyage.

JAB

Browsing ComingSoon.net just now, I noticed that the full trailer for Rocky Balboa (AKA Rocky VI) dropped today. Curious, I clicked on the link and watched it. I have to admit, guys: I wanna see this movie. Maybe not at the first-run theater, maybe not even until it’s on DVD . . . but I want to see it. The reasons for this go back to my childhood.

When I was younger, I really dug the Rocky movies. My two favorites were III and IV, where Rocky fights Mr. T and Dolph Lundgren, respectively. My least favorites were II and V — II because of the insanely tedious parts where Rocky is reading to his comatose wife, and V . . . well, because it was a depressing, pointless, and not very good film. Who wants to see a movie about Rocky where his life goes down the shitter? Not me, certainly. So the seeds for me wanting to see Rocky Balboa were planted then. The trailer is pretty cool, too, so that also helps.

The movie’s story is basically a parallel retelling of the first: Another underdog story, featuring most of the original cast. (Despite her character being dead, I’m not sure whether Talia Shire [Adrian] will be in it or not. I’ve read reports stating that she’ll reprise her role via flashbacks, or via archive footage.) Also seems that a dash of humor as been thrown into the mix, at least from what I can glean from the trailer.

Here’s the official synopsis of the film: “An aging Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) comes out of retirement, intending to fight a few low-profile local fighters. He is approached to fight a match with the reigning heavyweight champion, Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver), and soon his comeback sets off a media firestorm.”

Laugh at me if you like, but I think the movie could be good. At the very least, it should be entertaining.

JAB