Here's a good post (link courtesy of Jared) that says some things that need to be said. I've been telling people that for years... Except the way I said it was more like, "If you concentrate on being beautiful on the inside, you can't help but make be beautiful on the outside, too." Granted, that's just me shamelessly pandering to the idealist in everyone, but the sentiment is correct. If you're a wonderful person who concentrates on actually being a person (i.e., an individual), you may not get picked up by random guys at the club, but you're sure as hell going to be more likely to keep the ones you can get ahold of. An old girlfriend of mine (name of Ashley, for anyone who cares), once asked me why I was with her. I told her, "Because you're pretty enough to catch my attention, and interesting enough to keep it." The fact of the matter is that guys will always go after the pretty girls - that's never going to change. Our conception of what's pretty changes every so often, but people will always pursue people to whom they're attracted, and that's the way it should be. However, anyone worth having will just as quickly grow tired of anyone who's not as pretty on the inside as on the outside.

Now, on a totally different subject: I was sitting at IHOP with my brother and his girlfriend, Anna, having just watched Spiderman 2. We were discussing the movie, naturally, and going over what we liked and disliked about it. Naturally, many of my complaints -- just because that's the way I am -- have to do with the liberties that Hollywood takes with reality. For example,
A) I didn't like the way they did that fusion thing. There are a few problems with it... They used Tritium for their fusion reaction, and they claimed that there were only 25 lbs. of tritium on the earth. While there may be free-floating tritium in the world, it's not likely, as it has a half-life of only 12.3 years. In fact, tritium is produced as a by-product, created in the water coolant systems of certain particle accelerators. The amount of tritium that can be produced is therefore more or less limitless, though it does take a lot of electricity to do it.
B) The fusion reaction looked like a miniature sun. That's all well and good, except for the mini-solar flares. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that the electromagnetic shield that was erected contained the heat of the reaction so that it wouldn't fry the spectators, but once that flare left the area, everyone in the vicinity would have needed SPF 2000 or so to stay alive. You saw how quickly it ate through that ceiling beam, right?
C) When he's stopping the train, the sides of the front where the spiderwebs press against it bend inward, as expected. However, it seems to me that the front of the train, against which Spidey was braced, should have been just as bent. I have no numbers on the actual magnitude of acceleration the train endured, but since it didn't through people forward when it slowed down it may have been low enough that I'm off base here.

I had some complaints with Troy, too... Three, to be exact:
Greek legend: Menelaus didn't die at Troy, he took Medea (sp?) back home.
Movie: Killed by Hector while trying to kill Paris.

Greek legend: Agamemnon survived the sacking of Troy, and went back to his warm, loving home, where he was brutally murdered by his wife, Clytaemnestra (sp?) ('cause he sacrificed one of their daughters to propitiate the gods so the Acheans could win the war).
Movie: Yup, you guess it. He dies at Troy.

Greek legend: Achilles gave his armor to Patroclus to wear in battle so that the Trojans will see it and run away, rather than egaging the untried youth in combat.
Movie: Patroclus steals Achilles's armor and wears it into battle without Achilles knowing, and is killed by Hector, which fuels Achilles's rage against Hector, leading to the oh-so-spiffy fight scene between the more manly two of Jared's "mantastic trifecta."

I know there are a few other blatant errors in the movie, but none of them really got my goat like those above did. True, they screwed up the whole Briseis thing, they didn't even include Chriseis and Chryses, and they covered in supposedly days what the Greeks accomplished in years. And where were all the guys getting pierced through the nipple with bronze-tipped spears? I was looking forward to it. (c; But I can deal with it.

But the most incredibly ridiculous movie error I've seen recently was in The Chronicles of Riddick (which I saw twice, by the way -- once because Andy and I decided to see it, and again because Laura Ann thinks Vin Diesel is mantastic and Andy dragged me there again. It wasn't bad, but not worth two trips to the theater). My complaint comes in regarding the planet Crematoria.

A) The prison is underground. Fine and dandy. But they open up the ceiling once a day (or maybe twice a day -- once at dawn and once at dusk?) to freshen up the air. So Crematoria has an atmosphere that's breathable. Okay. However, the temperature is supposed to be -200 at night and +700 in the day (I'll assume Fahrenheit readings, 'cause -200 celius is _way_ too close to absolute zero for me to buy it.). Watch the thermometer, the temperature rises pretty quickly. However, one of the main characteristics of an atmosphere is that it insulates -- it retains heat during the night, and absorbs heat during the day. That drastic temperature change simply isn't possible on a planet with a breathable atmosphere.
B) The idea of Crematoria having an atmosphere anyway is ridiculous. Planets with that sort of temperature fluctuation soon burn off most of the useful gasses they possess. No more atmosphere. (I can't remember if it's the heavy gasses that burn off of or the lighter ones, but whichever it is, oxygen and nitrogen are in there.)
C) They decide to make a run for it, keeping between the line of darkness and daylight. Which means the sun hasn't touched the rocks they're running on yet. Rocks retain heat and cold better than air. Which means those rocks are somewhere around -200. Can you say frostbite?
D) Even being generous with the numbers, we can see that the idea of running in that perpectual predawn area is ridiculous. On Earth, that line moves upwards of 1000 mph at the equator. Even if we lengthen the day and make the planet smaller, we're _never_ going to get a planet that has any hope of maintaining what's obviously relatively normal gravitational levels (they're not doing the Neal Armstrong moon hop anywhere) where that line moves under 20mph, which is doubtlessly how quickly they're running.
E) After getting dragged out of the direct sunlight (which causes fireballs to bounce around mere moments after it hits, by the way), where he'd been lying for, what, a minute? Two minutes? Thirty seconds? Doesn't matter, it's impossible. Anywho, after getting dragged out by the other guy (I'm not sure how you spell the name of his race. Furyon? Furian? Furion? Feureion?), he stands there in the cool shade while the other guy gets obliterated by walking scant few yards outside. Umm, seems to me his skin should have been melting off his bones just being within a hundreds yards of that inferno. But that's just me.


And now for the legitimate, non-scientific, non-nit-picky gripe:
Oh yeah, and the whole thing that made Riddick cool in Pitch Black (that was the name of the movie, right?) was the fact that he had the cool eyes. They were very good about making the eyes shine in The Chronicles of Riddick, and having him take off his sunglasses to see in the dark, but they had him going without his glasses several times in light that would have blinded him in the first movie. Besides which, they didn't use his eyes to advance the plot whatsoever in the Chronicles. They were cool, you knew they were there, he used his nightvision to slaughter a few guards in a totally gratuitous display of violence near the beginning, but they never impacted the plot. Boo, I say. Way to take something that made him cool and downplay it until he's just another badass. I preferred the individuality, personally. It's almost like the writers gave up in the middle. Here are the Necromongers, so we know there's going to be darkness, right? Sounds like the perfect environment for Riddick. But no, they immediately abandon all efforts at giving him a niche in which to fit, and instead assign his super-badassness to some sort of racial heritage. BOOOO!!!! Some good action sequences, but overall, I give it a thumbs-down. If you don't have a clue who Riddick is, you might like the movie as just another action movie. But if you saw and liked Pitch Black (which I did), it's disappointing. Boo.

Okay, I'm done now. Peace, guys. Lemme know if anything cool is going on. I turn 22 in a week!