Roswell, Salamanders, And The Forgotten Topic
Wednesday, May. 07, 2003

Aisai is watching the 3rd from the last Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am too, I guess, since I'm sitting at the coffee table typing this into my Palm.

Roswell

Even from the start, I was saying that Roswell was the prototype for Smallville. At first, I didn't realize how accurate this was and that it was just the Max = Clark and Liz = Lana visual resemblance.

Though, it must be pointed out, that the gal who plays Liz can act circles around Kristin Kruek. Though Kristin has the good looks of a superhuman, supermodelly uber-gal, Whateverhername Appleby has great I-could-actually-know-that-gal looks and personality. Or, she is able to project a personality that is very likable.

However, not just actor choices make the two series similar, but the grand schemey plot. Hunky teen fell to earth, yeah, he's an alien, and he has special powers. He's smitten by the girl with long brown hair and a cute lil face. The difference is that in Roswell, in the first show, Max let's Liz know that he's an alien. Why? Well, Liz gets shot and he heals her.

The other similarity seems to be that after about 10 shows they seem to get all over the place. However, that said, we're at the 18th or so episode and it rocks. Right now, Tess has just showed up. Don't know what that means? Good, I'll try to alert when the series loops around again. Heck, it only has 66 episodes.

Salamanders

If you look at the title of the entry before this, you know it's titled something like Day before Flood Day. Yep, yesterday was flood day. Huntsville Flooded.

Well, I happen to know that areas of higher elevation tend to have less standing water. I was able to actually drive to the two closest excuses for cities and read the meters that I bill them off.

The city of Triana gets a bill that's considerably smaller than your average mall. Triana only has residents since it was poisoned with DDT a few decades back. If you live there, you get money, part of the settlement. But if you don't live there, you don't. Therefore, if you're a deadbeat and want to surf off the dole, the dole is much larger in Triana, and, it'll kill you slowly. Thus is the system which doesn't see that it's a dynamic system.

Sorry about that soapbox, but let's talk about those salamanders.

At the Edgewater Metering Station, which is in the last area that Madison and Huntsville get tangled sanitary sewer wise, when I went in, in rushed the water. And on the wet floor, two salamanders, decided they'd have a better chance of survival than out in the storm.

The storm was great too, by the way. About 2 inches of rain ever six hours. I only saw standing water trap one car. It's not the air intake, people, it's the water coming up your exhaust and creating more backpressure than the car can handle.

It's the banana in the tailpipe.

Snakes were coming out of newly planted soybean feilds to get out of the water, only to be smooshed on the pavement. Quite tragic, but I didn't know how many snakes were around on a regular basis. But that said, the poor babies.

And speaking of poor babies, I was there with one six inch long salamander and one five inch long salamander hangin' out with me. Well, I was planning on stretching this tale into an epic, but I'm tired of it already. After changing out the datacard and recording the totalizer number, I caught both of the salamanders and chucked them out into the leaves.

Now, these salamanders are worth a much better story than I'm writing. They were beautiful.

The first one that I got was the smaller one. Since I'd never thrown salamanders before, I was a little worried that he'd impact badly. I was tossing him onto wet leaves, but he didn't weigh much and I was concerned that he'd suffer sudden deceleration trauma. Well, I needn't worry since he/she grabbed onto a leaf on a nearby tree and hung there.

It was the first time that I'd seen a salamander hanging from a tree. It might be my last. I better savor it. [Aaah]

The bigger salamander was harder to catch. But easier to not be concerned with his deceleration trauma. He was rejoined with the great flooding yonder, and I left and locked up.

Forgotten Topic

There was supposed to be a third thing I wrote about, but I�ve forgotten what it was.