There’s an amusing article up at the Washington Post, wherein the author points out all the hilariously inaccurate and wholly fabricated locations that 24 has used during its first season set in my ridiculous hometown of Washington D.C.

The traditional, “In what universe can you get from the White House to Foxhall Road in five minutes?” complaint rears its head. This is familiar to those of us in L.A. who laugh our asses off at the thought of getting from downtown to Burbank in ten minutes in the middle of rush hour traffic.

I will grant you, the “bad guys scuba diving up to the White House” was pretty damn ridiculous, since unless the entire swamp that sits beneath the city instantly liquefies, there will be no bad guys scuba diving up to the White House.

The geographic monkeying is still not as bad as it is on some shows, like when Bones relocated Arlington Cemetery to the other side of the Potomac for their pilot.

But 24 is at least somewhat plausible in its D.C.-ness. I’ve actually been pretty impressed the way that the squat parts of L.A.’s downtown have stood in for D.C.’s legislatively height-challenged buildings.

There’s definitely aspects of it that are unrealistic, but really, there are aspects of every show in which you have to suspend your disbelief. Longtime 24 viewers with any knowledge of L.A. geography whatsoever know that the Time-Traffic Continuum is never, has never been, and never will be respected by the show.

And now, those with that same knowledge of D.C. are learning that for themselves.

Having lost a fairly large amount of weight, I now have a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit. I gave the vast majority of it to Goodwill, which is probably appropriate since that’s where I’m now buying most of the clothing to replace what no longer fits.

However, I’m a bit torn about what to do with a number of t-shirts I have which hold some sentimental value. Mostly rock shirts from when I was in high school and college, as well as a few shirts from previous shows I’ve worked on.

I have a couple options I can think of, and I’d like to solicit some advice as to what else you guys would recommend. So far I have thought of:

a) Keeping all the shirts in case I get fat again (an idea I’ve largely rejected simply because I feel like that would simply encourage me to get fat again, which is why I’m getting rid of all my old clothes in the first place)

b) Cutting them up and keeping the parts of actual sentimental value and turning them into some sort of art – framing them or making a quilt (or more accurately, having a friend who can actually sew help me make a quilt) or something.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

I read about a website called YourFonts, which will let you make a free TrueType font out of your own handwriting. I thought, that sounds kind of fun, and maybe I can make something that will actually make my handwriting legible.

Here are the results:

Yep, that worked out well.

There’s wrapping, and then there’s sticking a fork in it. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to go work for 2 weeks and two days to stick a fork in it. By Good Friday, it should all be gone.

The odd thing is, I still have to bring all my crap in, as if I were actually starting a new job. The whole ergo keyboard/mouse/laptop stand, eight bajillion computer cords, and all the assorted detrius I need like pens and a stapler (and in this instance, one of my tape guns).

Part of me feels like I shouldn’t have to still schlep all that in if I’m not going to be there that long. Oh well.

Anyway, paying work good. More than two weeks and two days of it would be great, but hey, if it keeps the wolves away from my door for an extra half-month, I’ll take it.

25 months and 1 day after I set out to lose 80 pounds I have lost…80 pounds!

I decided a while back I want to try and take off another 20 to get down to a BMI of 25, so I’m not done working out like a nutbar or keeping a ridiculously close eye on my food intake, but still, I’m pretty happy.

I honestly didn’t know if I could do it when I set out. I had tried to lose weight so many times and had it come roaring back after three or four months that I just didn’t know if I could do it.

And it definitely took me longer than I wanted it too – I initially set the fairly unrealistic goal of losing it all in 18 months, and then revised that to two years. I can’t tell you how frustrated I was that I hadn’t hit that goal (missed it by three very stubborn pounds), but I learned some time ago that plateaus are a big, frustrating part of this process.

But to finally, finally, FINALLY be where I wanted to be, 25 months and one day later, feels pretty goddamn great.

I went to take the trash out when I came back from my swim at the gym today, and as I walked past my apartment complex’s pool, I was a little surprised to see a pair of ducks swimming around:

I’ve seen seagulls in there before, which didn’t seem that unusual since I’m only about two miles from the ocean, but the ducks just struck me as odd, so I went and snapped off a few pictures. The fact that one of the neighborhood cats was watching them float around made it even funnier.

When one of the actors starring in your currently airing series has a new job before you do.

It takes a lot to make me stop watching a show. Evidence: I have watched every single episode of ER since its premiere. IN FUCKING 1994.

But I’m with Alan Sepinwall on this one: Heroes has lost me for good, and not because of anything in particular, but because of the sum total of its stupidity.

I was trying to explain why I still like Lost but am deleting my Heroes season pass to a friend, since both shows are often horrifically confusing and unnecessarily convoluted. It comes down to this: Motivation.

Characters on Lost have either had slowly evolving motivations or still are motivated by many of the same things that they were at the outset of the show. Most of the characters on Heroes seem to be motivated by whatever fits the plot that “chapter”, or even that week.

It becomes impossible to care who’s doing what or why when a character’s motivation can change so frequently and so capriciously, and you find yourself wondering why the hell you’re still watching this show in the first place.

It says a lot about how wrong you’ve gone when an unemployed person with nothing but time to kill decides that watching your show is not worth her time.

Credit to Sars of Tomato Nation for coining the phrase “DVR Break-Up“. Brilliant in its simplification of the process of deleting all recorded episodes of a show, then torpedoing the season pass. Amusing that she inaugurated it with Heroes six months ago, because she does not posess the patience (read: stupidity) that I do.

It used to take me at least two weeks to start losing my mind and climbing the walls after becoming unemployed.

My last day was last Tuesday, and I’m already starting to feel like the walls are closing in on me.

I really ought to consider a career where I don’t bounce between fourteen hour days and NOTHING.

It’s been about a month since I got glasses, and I notice a definite difference. I’m almost used to the feel of them on my face.

I wear them all the time – or almost all the time. The Giant Damn TV is about big enough and close enough to cancel out my nearsightedness, and the TiVo menus are gigantic enough that I can get away without wearing them if I don’t feel like it.

But I have to wear them when I’m using the computer (which is pretty much all the time) since there seems to be an onging design trend on the internet to use the tiniest fucking font people can get away with, and my good eye’s just not good enough to compensate for my bad eye. I bump up the font where I can, but there’s no match for the glasses.

I really didn’t realize how bad my bad eye had gotten, and evening them out with glasses makes for some interesting side effects when I take them off. My good eye is starting to get used to not needing to overcorrect, so when I take the glasses off, my vision, at least initially, is much worse than it was before I got glasses.

There is one bad thing, though. It’s a habit I can’t quite break: Whenever I walk into a dark bar or a dark room, I keep taking off my glasses like I used to when I walked into a darker room while wearing sunglasses. And it still takes me a minute to realize, “Wait, that didn’t actually help.”

And then I put my glasses back on, and I try to get used to the fact that from now on, this is how everything’s going to look.

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A small but related aside: I went to Zenni Optical to order a cheap backup pair of glasses since I’m a clumsy-ass who breaks everything remotely fragile, and wound up ordering a pair of sunglasses too. What’s really ridiculous is that the sunglasses wound up being cheaper than the pairs I usually buy at Rite Aid, and they still look totally fine. Got both pairs in about two weeks for about 30 bucks total. Definitely recommend this place to my fellow four-eyes if you’re looking for cheapies or sunglasses.