The more people I meet, the more I like my cats.

When our various governments keep crying wolf, and strive to ensure that the general population is terrified of anyone wearing a turban, nobody should be surprised when this is the result.

My favourite part is this: Farooq said that even officials from the Transportation Security Administration soon realized the flight crew had overreacted, but by the time that conclusion had been reached the trio were forced to stay in Denver for the night and catch a flight the next day — at their own expense.

Mind you, it's entirely his own fault for dressing funny and having the audacity to pray during the flight.

Snakes on a Plane!

On a lighter note, atara, pierrekrahn, oshawa and I went to the drive-in last night to catch a double bill of Snakes on a Plane and Miami Vice.

The plan was to catch the first movie and escape before the second one started, but events conspired to make us sit through the second one as well. In short, pierrekrahn's car died when the first movie ended. It simply refused to start when we wanted to leave. He'd just had the car fixed for a problem with stalling earlier, and the car had been running great all evening until then, so we can only guess that there may have been a problem with the gas he put in it on the way to the theatre. It's normally a pretty reliable car, so I'm hoping this won't be an expensive fix for him. =(

Once the rest of the cars had gone, the drive-in staff came over and tried to help us get the car started, but to no avail. Eventually we concluded that he'd have to contact CAA for a tow. He had his phone set to speaker mode so that we could all follow the conversation. The expression on the faces of the theatre staff was priceless when they informed him that the tow truck would probably get there "about a quarter to three". We offered to push his car out the gate so that they could close up and go home, and they gratefully chipped in on the effort.

When the tow truck finally showed up, we quickly realized that three of us were going to have to find our own way back to town. Fortunately oshawa managed to get hold of his insomniac room-mate, and she came out and gave us a lift home. Worst case would have involved calling a taxi, but we were way out in the middle of nowhere (nothing but us, the stars, some empty mobile homes and a huge field of sunflowers). At the end of it all, atara and I got home just after 4:00 this morning. Chilled, but otherwise intact.

On the plus side, we were well away from the city lights and managed to catch a decent show of The Perseids.

As for the movies...

Snakes on a Plane was about what we had expected. It was a fun bit of action, gore, shock and humour that you'd expect from a b-movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. Right from the start it was easy to peg the people who were going to die horribly, and the ones who were going to redeem themselves by the end of the show. It's a movie that's worth seeing once - though I suppose a serious ophiophile might go back for a repeat viewing.

On the other hand, Miami Vice managed to crawl in well under my already-low expectations. They could have shaved out at least 40 minutes of pointless insert shots and passionless love scenes, and still had a long, boring movie. The characters were all cardboard and unsympathetic, and the plot (such as it was) did not enthral me. Some stunning visuals, or cool action sequences might have partially redeemed the film, but it was lacking in those too. A good one to miss.