shepp

Ah, P.D.... Jon Ginoli is a pal of mine. (Lives two blocks up the street, actually.) I'll tell him you said hi.

0 to 6 indeed. I stand corrected.

^ Neither can I.

Yep. And in the pseudo-scientific spirit of the poll: I've annoyed other people intentionally, but I've never tried to annoy you. So I'll vote for annoying you.

I think the Kinsey scale is germane to this discussion. It rates sexual attraction all the way from 1 (totally het) to 6 (totally same-sex). Which is to say that being bisexual doesn't mean that you're equally attracted to both (or all) sexes throughout your life. Sexual orientation can be a lot more complex than a simple binary (or trinary) division. One female-to-male transsexual friend of mine was a total lesbian before transition, but after transition he came out as a gay man... Which is to say that iin his case, queerness actually trumped gender-choice...

Spiderman, of course... But I'm curious as to why you only included these two rides, which are pretty damn dissimilar. Why not include Curse of DarKastle, which uses 3D like Spidey, or the DLR Indiana Jones Adventure, which uses the same ride system as Dinosaur? Could it be that you've only ridden the two you mentioned? Could this be yet another totally meaningless TPR poll?

What I recall on Tatsau is announcement stating "no loose articles such as purses or sunglasses." As a previous poster stated, I don't view securely strapped glasses as being a "loose article," any more than properly tied shoes are "loose." I mean, those puppies aren't coming off short of decapitation. In the vast majority of cases, if ride ops ask about my glasses, they're fine once I show them the Croakies. (In fact, since my original post, I remembered that's exactly what happened on my first Tatsu ride.) I don't think it's whining to want to be able to fully enjoy the visuals of a ride unless there's a good reason not to. And I honestly can't figure out the reason why specs are banned on a few rides, but not other, similar ones. As far as possible solutions... No, I don't want to have to deal with bifocal contacts just so I can see properly focused ground from Tatsu's lift hill. (In fact, my partner does wear contacts, and one of the coasters that day knocked one lens out of alignment, leaving him half-blind for a while.) And hiding glasses from the ops and putting them on while on the lift hill is not only against the (stupid) rules, Tatsu's restraints pinned my arms down so firmly that getting the glasses securely back on was a real struggle...not something I'd try again. But then, there are rides that require riders to remove their hearing aids, too...which, in view of some platform PA systems, would probably be a blessing.

^ Well, in Kansas and Massachusetts, girls can get married at age 12! And they call us perverts...

Ah, I see. I'd figured that it was Jesus' way of punishing me for being Jewish, till I remembered He placed Six Flags in the hands of Mark Shapiro...

OK, I'm a real myopic rider, and last week I was at KBF. The XCelerator ops stringently required I remove my eyeglasses, though they were securely stapled to my head with a new pair of Croakies. This was irritating when it happened a couple of years ago, but even moreso since I have in the meantime ridden both TTD and KK multiple times with Croakied glasses, no problem. I was told it was the "manufacturer's requirement," but I find it hard to believe that Intamin somehow decided that glasses were OK at 128 mph, but not at 80. Then at SFMM, I rode Tatsu one time with fastened glasses, but the next time I rode, I was already fastened in my restraints when the op told me to take them off. Now, my specs are worth several hundred bucks and necessary for my eyesight, and I'm not about to hand them to a complete stranger or let them sit unguarded on the platform, so I stuck them in my pants pocket. They might easily have fallen out or been broken, so on the lift hill I was rather naughty and put them securely on again. Next day, I was prepared and put them in a case in a fastened pocket and rode blurrily; it was only later that I saw that one of the Tatsu riders on the cover of the SFMM guide was apparently wearing glasses herself. Now, what I'd really like to know is why it was OK to ride with glasses on S:UF, but not Tatsu. Because Tatsu passes over a pedestrian walkway? Well, so does S:TE (which goes faster, at least in theory, than XCelerator), and glasses are OK on that. And there's no more reason to think unsecured glasses will fall off on Tatsu than on X or Deja Vu, right? And why let people ride with them loose in their pockets, but not tightly fastened to their heads? For my own protection? Since plenty of bozos ride with unsecured cellphones in their pockets, I'd frankly rather have shatterproof lenses over my eyes if one ever goes flying. Heck, when I'm riding on my motorcycle, I demand eye protection, and I never go as fast as XCelerator. (Well, almost never.) I mean, what if Fabio flies into my face? Fear of litigation? In that case, ban all eyewear on all coasters. I'd be forced to get contact lenses, but at least things would make some sense. So can anyone give me a good rationale for the capricious, inconsistent, seemingly stupid no-glasses thing?

^ Okay, I only rode Psyclone once last week, and hadn't ridden it for a couple of years (after which I swore "Never again"), but I went expecting the absolute worst and it seemed rather...docile. Certainly less grueling than, oh, Viper or one of X's now-infamous outside seats. And I'm no fan of roughness... Maybe it has somethng to do with expectations?

Will wonders ever cease? Retracking and extensive braking has, I found out last week, turned Psyclone into a rideable (even rerideable!) puppy.

^ Also you're near the Sopranos...

Goliath at SFMM 4 days ago. Gotta love the headchopper tunnel.

I did it years ago, back in my more ambitious hiking days. It's a very strenuous day hike, especially if it's hot. A much better idea is to get a wilderness permit and camp out in Little Yosemite Valley, hitting Half Dome the next morning, before the afternoon thunderstorms roll in. And it's a little freaky, especially going down, since the granite's steep and slick, and you're in the middle of a conga line of people. Nothiing too tough, though. Another great hike to the heights, better views than Half Dome's in some ways, is the trail to Clouds Rest. And then there's the hike up Mount Whitney...

^^ The 8th and 9th. Won't be online after tonight, tho...

Of course that's what would happen. Much like its ok to come in here and say you accept homosexuality, yet its NOT ok to make a statement saying you are strongly against homosexuality. It's a double-standard that generated just from the very nature of the thread and the way we as a society are supposed to treat hoosexuality (with acceptance and whatnot) Um, I don't think it's a "double standard." The two viewpoints are simply not symmetrical, any more than being for slavery is simply the obverse of being against it. And calling guys on the whole objectifying-women-as-pieces-of-meat shtick has everything to do with women's real position in society, not merely some "politically correct" whatsis. On the other hand, I do love the pole.

Already been to BGA in '06. On Sunday, heading down to KBF, DLR, DCA, SFMM, maybe Universal if I have the energy. And I have a SFMW pass. Florida in the fall is possible, especially for HHN, but this year I'm kinda saving up for a trip to China. No, not the one at EPCOT...

Sorry to be an old grouch, but I haven't been to an SF stunt show anywhere that I regarded as better than dreadful. But since I'll be at SFMM later this week, maybe I'll give it a spin. At least I'll be able to sit down in the broiling sun for a while and cultivate heat stroke.

Not to be unkind, but look at it this way: Your husband's waist is about twice as large as the average rider's. For any ride requiring restraints and/or lapbars, a seat big enough to accomodate him would be so large that many other riders, especially kids, would be rattling around dangerously. However, as has already been stated, there's plenty of nonride stuff to do at SFMW. If he's at all interested in animals and sea life, he could easily spend an enjoyable day there without riding anything at all...

That's silly. Nobody ever goes to the bathroom on 24.

Notwithstanding the overwhelming nature of KK and TTD, Hulk's gamma ray tube scenario, sudden ramp-up, sight of the circle of sky approaching, and the immediate inversion afterwards are just such a fine combination.

Hot? Sure An even bigger annoyance to the storyline? Definitely. Annoying...definitely. Maybe it's because I'm queer, but Li'l Kim seemed like nothing more than the archetypal SoCal bimbo, and when she went to work at CTU, I thought, "The Bushes have nothing on the Bauers when it comes to nepotism." When she turned up (briefly, thankfully) this season, I thought ,"Nooooo..." At least you can believe Chloe actually knows how to boot a computer. I guess I'm in the minority, but I actually liked this season a lot. But I'm not sure how they can sustain the premise for 3 more seasons. What's next, a band of New Zealand ecoterrorists unleashing a plague of rabid squirrels in Griffith Park?

Yeah, Mencken and Bierce were almost as cranky as Jesus's dad.

Oh, surely not "the best." Better than The Sopranos, Deadwood, nip/tuck, The Shield, The Wire? I find 24 morally dubious, utterly improbable, and totally addictive: I've watched them all. But Jesus, how many moles has CTU had by now? Two hundred? A thousand? A skillion? Doesn't give one a lot of faith in their intellligence-gathering abilities...