PROFESSIONAL SNAKE WRANGLER

I can now officially enter “Snake Wrangler, 2005 – present” on my resumÈ. I’ll be starting my new part-time job as field grunt and computer guy at Swaim Biological Consulting at the end of the month (one of my responsibilities will be making a real web site to exists at that URL). This means that I’ll be getting outside for part of the week, checking snake traps and tagging the little beasties. I also get to work with some very cool people who get paid to catch reptiles in the real world. These are all good things.

[clipped whine]

Wow, haven’t felt the need to do that for a while. Nothing like a blog to magnify the secret pleasures of self pity. And it’s not even December!

If you like seeing people get kneed in the head, elbowed in the head, or chair-smashed in the head, then you should see Ong Bak, the Thai Warrior. It provides these elements in profusion. It’s a pretty electrifying martial arts flick, featuring Tony Jaa as a bumpkin Muay Thai expert out to retrieve his village’s stolen Buddha head. The plot, as you might imagine, is thin, but the bone-crunching, face-smashing, testicle-popping combat is pretty awesome (there are simply no appropriate similes involving the word ‘thick’ that I am willing to commit to ASCII). Tony Jaa is one of those rare humans who is actually capable of unassisted flight. Unlike the strung-up stars of Hong Kong martial arts marionette extravaganzas, he still visibly hears the insistent moan of gravity, but only in the way a swallow or a balloon might. He is also capable of running sliding splits under moving vehicles. His taught and glistening musculature will no doubt invoke involuntary gasps from those who, like my girlfriend, are female, and sudden (but lasting) flushes of physical inadequacy from those who, like me, have pretensions toward masculinity. The ending is bloody awful, but I think seeing someone knee an opponent in the forehead from a standing position makes up for it.

Also, although I know it’s totally lame to keep linking NPR stories, this one about a mathematician’s quantification of love is funny. Really. He describes how he attempted to minimize the time spent in the pain resulting from a failed proposal by forcing himself to look at photos and mementoes, aided by strategically placed bowls of M & M’s all over the house. Actually, that was the only funny part.