The Marci Rating System

credit: I saw it first on tumblr (which is where I was able to nab the image from, no thanks to flickr there), but it was credited there to Rob Kroenert, so a thank you to him as well!

[Note: This is cool -- R. Kroenert notes that there were about 20 other photographers also taking pictures, which means that there are a relatively large number of people dedicating their time to photographing spectacular natural phenomena, as opposed to, say, committing crimes.

Also, more than 900 people have favorited the photo over on flickr, which is awesome -- that's 900 people *celebrating* spectacular natural phenomena as opposed to, say, committing crimes.

You know what sucks, though? The way that *I* was exposed to this photo, and the way *I* am celebrating it by posting it here, albeit credited and linked and everything, could be considered a crime if certain ::ahem:: legislation passes.

Dammit.]

{NOTE2: Hey, but check this out! wikipedia has a pic that’s shareable under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. Woohoo!}

credit: E. Howe (aka Ambitious Wench) THANK YOU FOR SHARING!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I wasn’t too impressed by the first episode, but ep 2 (Molehattan) offered a hilarious look at what it’s like to be a Baxter building tenant:

“Is it Doctor Doom? A giant monster? The Negative Zone again?”
-Mr. Bartleby

“Is that one of your supervillain friends? He’s quite tiny, isn’t he?”
-Mrs. Monet

(Mole Man just never gets any respect, does he?)

(Since apparently no F4 post is complete without a shoutout to Party of Two, by Traincat:

“I’m pretty sure we can watch a movie and then go defeat the Mole Man,” he said. “It’s not like he moves very fast. He’s got like, arthritis or something. He’s ancient.”)

Also, I had a startling realization re: Baxter building neighbors. The Fantastic Four apparently live next door to Christine Lagarde!

Christine Lagarde (IMF Managing Director)

Classy Neighbor Lady

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

It’s everything I love about the Avengers, *plus* crayons!

64 Colors, by victoria_p (musefool)

The Avengers take on coloring, for the good of the team. (PS: Darcy is the best.)

“The god of thunder is totally welcome to come and color with us if he’d like. And how weird is my life that that is a thing I actually just said?”

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

All my thanks to starandrea for my fantastic food icons!

This one’s my favorite (right now!):

::omnomnomnomnomnom::

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

BASEBALL MOVIE!!! Nothing more awesome when it’s wintry and snowy outside. A few thoughts…

1. For a BASEBALL MOVIE, it’s really dark. Like, physically, the lighting is very dim in a lot of scenes.

2. I liked it, as much as I usually like any BASEBALL MOVIES, and considerably more than I like most Brad Pitt movies.

3. It’s a metaphor, right?

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Due to reasons I often find baffling, I end up getting a lot of emails sent to my work address by UPS. Shipping confirmations and delivery confirmations, for the most part, which are all essentially dull, though I try to open them and at least *check* what they say, since every once in a while there’s that ‘the package weighed *HOW* much? and we signed for that?’ moment.

Today I got my favorite kind — the UPS Exception Notification. As far as I can tell, I get those when UPS was planning to deliver something, but then didn’t. (Often due to weather-related reasons, although I have noted a slightly cranky tone in the ‘YOU WERE CLOSED’ ones.)

I think this is my favorite so far:

This notice alerts you delivery of the following shipment has been rescheduled.

Exception Reason: LATE TRAIN

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

There I was, this morning, driving along in extremely cold weather, la la la, everything’s fine.

Then I realize: THERE’S A WEIRD SYMBOL ON MY DASH DISPLAY. Crisis! My brain started going round and round in this little panic circle. How long has the light been on? The car just got inspected! Maybe they broke something! Maybe it’s just cold? What does that symbol even mean? Should I pull over?

Unfortunately, I was only about five minutes into my 30-minute trip when I noticed the light, so I had a while to fret about it. I went through this calming mental checklist more than a few times:

-the car is not on fire
-the car is not overheating
-my rpm indicator goes up and down in response to my actions, as does the speedometer
-I’m not out of gas
-the NEW SCARY LIGHT is not red, nor is it blinking, counting down, or getting bigger (all good signs!)
-no one is honking or flashing their lights as I drive by them

In this state of semi-controlled WTF is happening, I made it to work (okay, Panera, but work was next!), where I spent a while flipping through my car manual to find the warning lights page.

IT WASN’T ON THERE!!! Gah! WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN, I asked myself. And it’s not like the manual is laid out in a way that makes any sense to me. It’s probably written for people who understand something about cars, aka ‘not me.’

Finally, I found another page with pictures on it. For reference, here is the indicator light I was seeing:

Yeah. For those of you who *aren’t* laughing yet, turns out that’s the ‘hey, your cruise control light is on’ indicator. I must have hit it with my giant mittens when I was turning the car on. On the plus side, crisis averted! Car not broken!

On the downside, that’s kind of embarrassing. (To be fair, my last car just plastered the word CRUISE up on the dash when cruise control was on.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

1. There really wasn’t much you couldn’t pick up from the fanfic (although I kept waiting for the dog to appear), but I liked the music.

2. It seemed a shame that there was only one woman in the book, and she was entirely absent from the movie.

3. Re: planning. Sometimes it’s a good idea! I couldn’t tell whether the movie just eliminated a LOT of ‘planning ‘n communicating’ in favor of sweeping scenery shots, or if they just had no plan. (In which case, why not? ‘Find the eagle’ has a certain simplicity that I can appreciate, but it lacks that crucial ‘then what’ step.)

4. Esca: king of facial expressions. Seriously, did anyone watch that movie and not want to give that guy a high five and a passel of kids to take care of? (I’m just saying, if Marcus and Esca were my neighbors, Esca would be the best babysitter ever, and Marcus would be the one who kept getting the wrong kind of bread at the market.)

5. Overall: eh, it was pretty good.

6. For anyone who doesn’t want to watch the movie (violence against kids — not cool), here it is, summed up in ten lines or so.

Marcus: ::kicked puppy expression::
Esca: I’m awesome.
Marcus: You’re a slave.
Esca: A slave who could kick your ass.
Marcus: ::kicked puppy expression::
Esca: Oh, for crying out loud.
Marcus: I’m super-serious about this. And everything.
Esca: Fine. You do try hard, I guess. ::fixes everything::
Marcus: We’re awesome.
Esca: Well, it was mostly me, but since that’s the first time you’ve smiled in the whole movie, sure. Can we do something less stupid fun next?

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Here is my essential problem with the Fantastic Four movie: none of the characters seem to actually have chemistry with each other. At all. Like, they don’t even come across as convincing friends, particularly friends who have known each other for ages.

I think part of it is that the movie kept getting distracted by explaining what was happening, or expositing backstory, instead of having the characters interact with each other in meaningful and interesting ways. (And of course, every ten minutes we had to have the DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DE-DOOMDOOM villain stuff.)

Johnny had a couple interesting throwaway lines about the Storm family (“Luckily Grandma still sends care packages,” “You’re not Mom”) but that was really it. Most of the so-called character development was for the Reed/Sue romance, but Reed played the ‘I LOVE SCIENCE’ card so hard I just ended up feeling bad for him that Sue was pressuring him into a relationship he didn’t seem to really want.

Anyway, I remember liking this movie when it came out in the theater, but I was not impressed upon re-watching.

On the other hand, here is (the only) fic I currently have tagged ‘fantastic.four’ on pinboard, which did not disappoint at all upon re-reading:

Party of Two, by Traincat, for Yuletide 2010
Johnny Storm/Peter Parker

“We should hang without masks,” Johnny elaborated. “Well, without you in mask. I wouldn’t be wearing a mask, obviously. I mean, I could, if it would make you feel more comfortable. Are you just really into masks?”

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

No, wait, I had *even more* to say about work! I was thinking, just now, about tumblr. ::cue wavy thought graphic::

If My Work Place Was Like My Tumblr

Me: Can I help you?
Customer: I DO WHAT I WANT!

***
Coworker: I’m going to lunch.
Me: RANDOM CAT PHOTO

***

Phone: ::ringing::
Coworker: You know there’s only 4ish months left till the Avengers movie, right?

***

It would be awesome, except we’d all get sued for sexual harassment before lunchtime.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.