While I'm normally more inclined to talk about Chuck Taylor(s) than Chuck Norris, I wanted to point out some things. First off I should note that 'Walker: Texas Ranger' is on TV.
(This is a long post. Click through and skip down to the horizontal break if you wanna move right on to the Sydney bit.)

1)Chuck Norris is an asshat. To whit, he sings the theme for the show. And it's dreadful.

2)Walker et al go on holiday. Walker and buds go 'extreme' mountain biking and race macho-ly down a big hill. Walker's girlfriend goes to buy frilly clothes [and shows her ass to the camera a few times as she tries it all on]. 'Oooo wookit da pwetty fwilly cwothes for me! I can wear dem for de burly menfolk!'

3)Walker just has to win said down-hill bike race. Can't have the 20-somethings beating Chuck-O's old ass.

4)Walker faces down Randall (Tex) Cobb in a bar. Tex Cobb would eat Walker like a burrito. If you can't conjure Mr. Cobb in your mind's eye, he was Leonard Smalls (the demonic biker) in 'Raising Arizona'. Again... like a burrito.

5)Finally, I just really came to terms with how much I dislike Chuck Norris. He's just a clown. He can have a 'strong woman' character on his show... as long as she's a Barbie doll at all other times and she's "merely" a lawyer. He can have strong men in his 'posse' as long as he never loses to them. (Tex just punched Barbie doll in the gut. hehe While this is supposed to make us see how bad he is... I just giggled. What can I say. heh)

6)Burrito.

So what's new besides my renewed hatred of Chuck? Well, we went to Darling Harbour in Sydney yesterday. Oh... dear... god... I walked around with my jaw scraping the ground for the first hour. It's so incredibly cool and beautiful and... brilliant. Pics soon, I swear. Still waiting on broadband to get installed. But I'll try to give you an idea.

Portlanders, imagine those beautiful July days downtown. Imagine Waterfront Park was 4 times as big. Imagine adding a harbour complete with soaring bridges and cruise ships and a monorail, pedal boats, restaurants, water taxis, a huge aquarium, chinese gardens, the saturday market and IMAX in the middle of it all and shops and little trains and ducks and kids chasing ducks... It's one of the most amazing places on Earth. It's like an amusement park and theme park and park park in the city and it's always there. It never goes away. And the best bit? We didn't even see it all. We didn't go to the Powerhouse Museum (Star Wars: Power of Myth thingy is there now), we didn't go to the Opera House and and and...

I've been wondering how I really feel about Australia and I haven't come up with an answer yet (I'm not ready... I'm still experiencing), but I can tell you that seeing Darling Harbour has made a huge impact on my feelings about Sydney. Sydney is magical. Sydney is beautiful. Sydney is what everyone wishes their city could be. Yes, even Portland. I love Portland and Oregon is quite possibly the most beautiful place in America, but Sydeny is mythic. It's really unfair to place other places up for comparison. I can't wait to see more.

Oh, we saw the Haunted Castle 3D at the IMAX theatre (Oh and do not give me any shit. I have always spelled 'theatre' that way. I also spell 'louvre' correctly, dammit. It has nothign to do with living here.). It was really well done technically. The story was a pretty slim like a computer game story line (*hears "he was a drifter... moving from town to town..." from The 7th Guest *), but it wasn't about story, now was it? It was about seeing cool 3-D imagery. The 3-D was extremely good and they had the full-sized IR goggles so it was fairly immersive. They're also showing Santa Versus The Snowmen 3-D as well as Spacestation 3-D which we plan on going back to see soon.

I'm working on a catalog of Australian morphology, too. hehe It's sort of a personal observation set. So far I'm working on the 4 prime types. Everything afterwards will be derivative of those 4.

Umm, I should be in bed. hehe

PS - My girlfriend is so pretty... looks never entered into our courtship, and in my mind I'm in love with the person who lives behind those beautiful eyes, but god is she ever pretty... and she puts up with me. Even when I'm a complete bitch (and boy can I ever be a bitch...). Anyway, that's all. hehe