Woke up at 9. Did nothing until 12. Went to her house. Got to look at her car for a bit (it’s not bad). Went to airport. Chatted a bit more. Now I’m here. Thanks, Ally.

Speedblogging ftw I need to get on the plane afk

1.) Do you enjoy having fun?
2.) Are you willing to take a leap of faith and take a look at this movie while it’s still in a theatre, in order to get the best possible experience? It’s difficult/impossible to replicate the feel of seeing something on a big screen, which I’ve personally been learning.
3.) Do you enjoy video games?
4.) Do you enjoy comic books?
5.) Do you enjoy a bit of a love story? I mean, just a sprinkle. It’s not all about the love story.
6.) Michael Cera is in this movie. Okay. I guess I’m lucky that I basically don’t care for any actor. Does anyone else happen to enjoy movies without paying attention to the actors?
7.) Yes, it’s full of videogame hipster bullshit. It doesn’t take itself seriously. Is that okay with you? It realises that it’s a combination of a love letter and a parody.
8.) Do you possess any nostalgia for the past at all?
9.) Do you enjoy the Zelda series?
10.) Do you enjoy having fun?

I will now link some blog entries that are basically “Scott Pilgrim vs. the Common Populace”

http://www.fearfulsymmetry.net/?p=761

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/08/12/129150813/-scott-pilgrim-versus-the-unfortunate-tendency-to-review-the-audience

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2010/08/12/triumph_of_the_nerds

http://nonstopkarate.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/review-scott-pilgrim-versus-the-world-somehow-the-movie-is-better-than-the-book/

Long story short: Give Scott Pilgrim a shot. Yes, there are elements where I am disappointed. Yes, there are scenes where I wish they would have done something else. Yes, it’s partially because I read the comics.

Really, if you want my actual opinion, read volumes 1 and 5 of the series. 1 sets the light-hearted tone, and 5 gives you the real meat and what the story’s about in proper.

Prompt: Write a scene driven by off-stage interaction.

It Ain’t Easy

[The scene is a living room. Basic. Standard. Couch, sofa, armchairs, lamps, decorations. It doesn't matter what else is there, as long as there's at least a couch, a coffee table in front of the couch, and a place for a television to go in front of the coffee table, but with no television on it. Everything in this scene takes place off stage. As the scene change begins, the only person in the room is JAMES, who has his feet on the table in front of the sofa and apparently watching the television (audience) with rapt attention, remote in hand. There are also grunting noises coming from next door. JAMES appears as if he's trying as hard as he can not to pay attention to what's going on to the right.]

ROBERT: Push, dammit! Take it!

[Grunting noises and, basically, heavy breathing are heard. Loudly.]

ANDY: I didn’t think it would be this hard!

ROBERT: Yeah, well, that’s what everyone says their first time, y’know?

ANDY: I read the instructions online and everything on that one wiki…

ROBERT: Doesn’t matter! It’s all about the experience and the feel!

[By the way, this whole time, James is just flipping channels. Feel free to react in any way, so long as it's closer to exasperation and not disgust. This isn't the first time things like this have happened.]

ANDY: Feel… man, what? I have no ide- AAAAARGH!

ROBERT: It’s your fault! Pass the oil, man, we need it to be more slippery!

ANDY: Man, I don’t know if that’ll fit in there anymore. I mean, just look at it. It’s all… I don’t even know how to describe that anymore.

ROBERT: Yeah, I know what you mean. That’s pretty gruesome… But we’ve gone this far, we’ve got to take it to the end!

ANDY: What?! What are you talking about? It’s ruined! It’s gone! We have to turn bac– What are yo– That doesn’t go in the– OH, HELL!

[Right before ANDY's ardent cry, there is the sound of basically a hand slapping flesh.]

ROBERT: Oh crap, did I get it in your eye? Sorry, but you know how it is, don’t you?

ANDY: No! I don’t! This is stupid. Why aren’t we doing this somewhere else, anyways?

ROBERT: Haven’t you seen it on TV? The kitchen is totally the best place to do this!

ANDY: If there’s going to be such a bloody mess everywhere, isn’t the bathroom or the shower better?

ROBERT: You make a fair point. We could go over there. But we look absolutely indecent. I mean, we’re already messed up enough.

ANDY: Yeah, you’re right… you know what, forget it. Let’s just finish this off.

ROBERT: That’s the spirit, cowboy! Yee-haw!

[Loud grunting is heard as JAMES rolls his eyes and leans back on the couch, looking at the ceiling, looking for an answer from whatever deity's bored enough to listen. As the grunting gets louder and louder, there's suddenly a very loud pop sound. From the doorway on the right, a ready-to-cook chicken comes sailing into the room, trailing stuffing, and lands with a splat on the floor behind JAMES. He merely rolls his eyes and continues paying rapt attention to the television. There is a beat before the next line.]

ANDY: I wasn’t expecting that.

ROBERT: You know, I wasn’t either.

[ANDY and ROBERT walk back into the room, wearing DANGER: MEN COOKING aprons, covered in blood, stuffing, sauces, and other various junk. They are indeed quite the mess, and it seems like they just walked out of a culinary explosion. ROBERT is wearing safety goggles. JAMES delivers his first line entirely deadpan, without looking at the two bedraggled survivors.]

JAMES: Takeout again?

==AUTHOR’S NOTES

ROBERT is a joker. He sounds cocky and confident. He says things to be taken entirely out of context, regardless of what the situation actually calls for. His jokes set things in motion.

ANDY plays the unwitting straight man to ROBERT. He sounds whiny and confused. Very, very confused. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know what he says, so it ends up that he just makes the jokes worse. Oh gods, this has bad characterisation written all over it

JAMES doesn’t really say anything.

They are trying to cook a holiday turducken. But it’s not like the audience knows that.

When reality falls, at least I’ll know when it hits.

When reality fell, at least I knew when it hit.

==

Problem exists: Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. Caused by the circular motion of the Pacific ocean currents, coupled with decades of bad trash practice, it sits anywhere from at surface level to tens of meters below the surface. This problem does not present itself as if it were an island, though; instead, it’s a nebulous conglomerate of various patches. The total size of the conglomerate is unknown, but is estimated at weighing over 700,000 tonnes.

What does this have to do with microbial life? Well, plastic is generally non-biodegradable. Methods used to break down plastics (as of the writing of the article I’m using for my source) are entirely chemical, except for photodegradation [EXPLAIN IT]. which merely makes the problem worse as the pieces just become easier to consume. Biodegradation specifically involves the breakdown of materials into base chemicals, not smaller pieces as photodegradation would do. Most microbes cannot identify the plastics as proper food, leaving them to sit there and do nothing. However, there is potential hope.

A type of bacteria has been noted to be able to consume nylon, discovered in the 1970s. A strain of Flavobacterium (non-motile, gram-negative, rod-shaped) was found in the waste water pond near a nylon factory in Japan, producing three enzymes that were entirely ineffective against any material other than the man-made nylon. Since this nylon compound could not have existed before 1935, the development of these Flavobacterium is fantastic in and of itself.

The experiment was reproduced using a strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (gram-negative, unipolar motility, rod-shaped, aerobic) in an environment where no food existed other than nylon. They evolved to produce a different mixture of enzymes than the Flavobacterium discharge. For additional SCIENCE, scientists were able to do a plasmid transfer as we did to transfer the enzyme-producing sequences into an E.coli from the Flavobacterium.

Pseudomonas has recently also been identified as an aid in the reproduction of a type of Sphingomonas, which is capable of breaking down plastic strips cut from grocery bags as found in an experiment performed by a Canadian student. The article mentions researchers in Ireland discovering that Pseudomonas as being able to break down polystyrene, but no experiments to that date had been performed with polyethylene, as exists in grocery bags. The Canadian polyethylene experiments allowed a 32% degradation in 6 weeks, while the Irish polystyrene experiments showed 43% degradation in 6 weeks.

http://news.therecord.com/News/CanadaWorld/article/354044

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/what-is-the-great-pacific-ocean-garbage-patch