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It’s raining outside. Now this shouldn’t be blog-worthy but until Sunday it hadn’t rained in San Diego for 182 days, setting a ‘no rain’ record for the city. The previous record of 181 days was set just last year.

But there’s no need to worry folks, the eminent governments of the Western world assure you there is no global warming, no greenhouse gas problem. So keep running your gas guzzlers, wasting energy, not recycling etc as normal weather variations will be back just as soon as another random event occurs to fix it.

This weekend sees the opening of the new version of Shall We Dance with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. As many people hopefully know this is a remake of a fabulous Japanese original movie.

Despite my dance background, I don’t intend to see the new version as I can’t see how it works. What makes the original so great is the premise of the man going behind his wife’s (and his culture’s) back to take dancing lessons, thereby freeing his soul from the sad life he has fallen into. The remake tries to keep this premise intact but I don’t see how anyone can take such a thing seriously in Western culture. Whilst they might be fine actors I don’t see Gere or J.Lo portraying the dignity that is evident throughout the original.

So far, I’ve read a bunch of reviews that agree with me so I am confident that I am not going to miss anything by not seeing it. Rather I’ll dust off my copy of the original and spend a sure two hours with Koji and Tamiyo. And, no matter whether you see the remake or not, I urge you to do the same.

In other movie news, I see that one of my favourite movies ever in the whole universe is finally out on DVD – Betty Blue. I’ll be buying my copy real soon, and you should rent this too though it’s content is less suitable for children than Shall We Dance.

Hey, why not have yourself a foreign film night?

This story from the BBC describes how the French government is backing a move to install cell phone signal blockers in all cinemas and theatres. I wish the same would happen here – it is very annoying to have your movie disturbed by cell phones lighting up around you as their owners text message oh-so-important information to each other. Hanging’s too good for ’em!

One of the neat things about computers is that you can timestamp any thing to pretty much what you want. Its easy to encode a picture with a false date, edit it to show things that weren’t there and no one is the wiser. And so it is with this sorry collection of pages that I call my blog, thoughts that were once expressed have been unexpressed, wiped from the ether as if they had never happened. And now that I think about it, maybe they never did ?

Somewhat different from last week’s choice, this week’s top pop pick is First of the Gang To Die by Morrissey. It is somewhat interesting that both artists are 80s icons making it big (again in M’s case) in 2004. I was never a big fan of Morrissey first time around but when I hear his music now I find myself enjoying it.

Sad news from the world of entertainment, the great Rodney Dangerfield died yesterday. I hadn’t even heard of him before discovering Caddyshack where I think he pretty much stole the show. A very funny guy, indeed.

I’m struggling not to post a thought about the current election campaigning here in the USA. I decided this blog wouldn’t touch politics, religion or sex (hey, my mother reads this!) but I’m not sure I can hold it in much longer. As a colleague of mine once said a long time ago, clenching is bad.

The tune of the week has definitely been Chocolate by the delicious Kylie Minogue. Its amazing to me how big she has become these days since she’s been around forever in the UK, having started out in the soap opera Neighbours before trying her hand at singing and having tons of hits before ‘breaking out’.

Her album Body Language is highly recommended.

Oct 12th 2004. At the request of my employer this article has been deleted

Saw this post about alien flight training on the AOPA website this week and am very disappointed. As they explain, the TSA has issued a “final interim ruling” (surely an oxymoron) stating that from October 20th any non US-citizen wishing to undertake any kind of flight training in the USA has to pay a $130 fee, send in fingerprints, photos etc and be approved. And not just once, but every time you want to take a training: the biennial review, an instrument proficiency check, a checkout in a new plane and so on.

I agree with the intent, lets keep a close eye on who might be wanting to fly in the skies, but its been proven time and time again then a Cessna 172 can do very little damage when used a weapon. Even filled with explosives it would cause less damage than driving a rental truck filled with same into a building.

As a resident alien I’ve already been approved by the USCIS, vetted by the FBI, CIA and who knows who else, submitted photos, fingerprints and deemed to bea suitable resident of the US of A. Its just crazy then that now I have to go through the same process to learn to fly, or to improve my safety through further training.

Hopefully common sense will prevail but as it stands, starting Oct 20th, all flight instructors in the US will have to check that their students are US citizens or aliens approved to take the training, keep records of this information under penalty of fines and jail time. I think many of them will give up, and many legally resident foreigners like myself will be taking a lot less training.

Oct 12 2004. At the request of my employer this article has been deleted.