Did I mention--? No, I didn't mention that it was a check for twenty-five dollars.
Now if I had been trying to deposit a check made out to Mrs. Fungus, I could see that, as the account at that bank is only in my name. If the check had been a serious amount of money, sure, that would make sense. But seriously, you're going to force me to make a second trip to the bank and bring my spouse with in order to cash a check that won't even buy a decent sack of groceries? Really?
As I was driving on to my second errand of the day--buying groceries--I came to the conclusion that the best course of action, which will avoid all such problems in the future, is for me to take my business to the same bank that Mrs. Fungus uses. It's going to be a pain, but this way the idiots at the Crete bank won't have to worry about me depositing any checks that have my wife's name on them next to mine.
* * *
Michael Mann is upset that people think he's a fraud. We're talking about the guy who manufactured a rise in global temperature that didn't actually exist, by writing a program to "interpret" data that could find a similar rise in a random hash of numbers.
...Before he gets going himself, Singer brings in Ross McKitrick, a well known scientist who long ago trashed the whole Hockeystick nonsense for what it was. Responding to Mann's New York Times op-ed, which was entitled "If you see something, say something.", McKitrick retorted:What else do I need to say?"OK, I see a second-rate scientist carrying on like a jackass and making a public nuisance of himself."Singer plainly thinks this is far too tame: "OK, I want to say something too," he says."I see an ideologue, desperately trying to support a hypothesis that's been falsified by observations. While the majority of climate alarmists are trying to discover a physical reason that might just save the AGW hypothesis, Mann simply ignores the 'inconvenient truth' that the global climate has not warmed significantly for at least the past 15 years -- while emissions of greenhouse gases have surged globally."
* * *
Last night Mrs. Fungus and I had a superhero double feature: Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. Of the movies that presage the latter movie, the only one I haven't seen is Captain America; I would have liked to have seen that beforehand but it wasn't critical that I missed it.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Avengers. Mrs. Fungus said she hadn't liked it, but when I asked her if I was to watch that one by myself she told me she was going to watch it with me. Last night turned out to be Die Nacht.
The interplay of the superheroes was itself a pretty interesting part of the story, and I enjoyed the movie so much I ended up watching a couple of the bonus features after the movie was over. I mean, dang.
In general I like these movies because they're entertaining stories, told well. I don't like movies which are "challenging" and I don't go for heavy drama or extreme graphic violence, and while you're at it you can keep the raunch, too. Give me a "good guy versus bad guy" story and have the good guys win in the end; none of this morally ambiguous crap where the bad guy is the protagonist of the story and the good guy is the antagonist and not really such a good guy anyway because he's a pedophile or a corrupt cop--you can keep that nihilist shit to yourself, Hollywood.
* * *
It has snowed every week this year, so far, and this week has not disappointed in that regard. It's snowing right now, though it's a kind of patchy "sometimes I see blue sky but it's still flurrying" snow. If we hadn't had that rainy thaw right in the middle of the month there'd be more than two feet of snow on the ground now. I don't really mind; and now that Mrs. Fungus' car has new tires on it, I can relax a bit about the weather.
I do like the snow. I don't like having to remove it from the driveway, and I don't like driving in it, but I just can't hate it the way many people do. When I see it snow I'm captivated by the way the flakes drift down. The way it sparkles at night is a sight to behold, and the glitter of the flakes as they fall is fascinating to me.
...yet it's been twenty years since I last went skiing. What's up with that?