Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Hollywood's Biggest Night
So the Academy Awards were Sunday, and of all the Oscars in my adult memory, this was the one I paid the least attention to. I didn't actually know they were taking place until the next morning, when I saw a news item on Yahoo listing the winners. Goodie for them. I don't think I saw any of the nominated films or actor/actress performances, which is about par for my course. I did see Pan's Labyrinth, which was the favorite for best foreign language film. It didn't win, though it did score three technical awards, for art direction and set design and stuff like that. Hell I don't know, what am I, Google?
As for the show, I didn't see much talk about it. Ellen Degeneres was hosting, which meant nothing to me. It was kind of news some years ago when she came out on her unfunny sitcom, and I guess she's got a daytime talk show now, but I never saw the sitcom and I've never seen the chat fest. I did hear her voice in Finding Nemo, but thought her character was more annoying than amusing. Kids liked her short term memory fish, I guess.
I honestly don't know enough about her to really have an opinion, but what
James Wolcott said about the show kind of sums up Ellen's public personna. Edgeless.
And while I can understand making a big deal about not jokily alluding to Anna Nicole Smith, there's a wealth of material to be mined from this year's celebrity rehab follies (I don't see why the bizarro antics of Britney Spears should be off-limits) but Ellen DeGeneres was determined to keep everything sunny sexless nerveless pastel.
Academy Award indifference aside, I do have something to say about movies. I've lately found myself clicking past the ABC Family channel, and while I'd expect to be instantly repelled by its offerings, they do show a lot of middle-brown films that are somewhat worth watching. In the past week I've recorded Independence Day, Beetlejuice, and Harry Potter 3 off the channel, and more or less enjoyed watching them later. You have to watch them later, since the commercials on that channel are unbelievable. I haven't timed the length of the movie segments, but they seem to be around 8-10 minutes, broken up by solid five minute blocks of commercials for family-friendly crap like Olive Garden, paper towels, sugary fruit drinks, pull-ups diapers (for children) and mini vans. The really scary thing is that if I'd ever gotten my shit together with a career... I would be the target audience for that garbage, with my wife and young child or two. *shudder*
Adding to the movie fun, when I took a break from the website work I spent all weekend on to see if HP3 was over yet so I could turn off the VCR (you really can't estimate the length of anything on ABC Family since the 33-40% commercials turns every movie into an epic), I caught the beginning of Van Helsing on USA, or TNT, or one of those other cable channels that show bad, non-R-rated action movies every evening. So I ended up taping it after HP3 ended.
I said I enjoyed them, but as I was reviewing that list of movies earlier, I realized that none of them were really any good. ID4 I saw years ago in theaters, and I remembered being unimpressed then. It hasn't aged well; the special effects are much less impressive, the uninspired design of the aliens and their ships is even more noticable with the hype gone, and the stupidity of the writing and characters and plot is much more noticable.
Beetlejuice was much the same. I remembered really liking it when I was about 14, and thought Winona was so adorable as the little goth daughter, and Michael Keaton was amusing as Beetlejuice. Seeing it now his antics seemed forced, I have no idea what I saw in Winona, and the special effects were like webcam video on YouTube quality. I did enjoy the music and dancing and set design, though.
Van Helsing was awful. Malaya and I were dismayed by it in theaters a couple of years ago, but... wait. I just read
my review and it turns out we went in expecting horseshit and were pleasantly surprised to find at least most of a pony. Funny, I remembered thinking it was awful. Didn't age well in my memory. At any rate, it was awful when I watched it on tape yesterday. Nothing but endless special effect sequences with too many monsters doing too many dumb things, and idiotic, largely non-sensical plot choked by amazingly bad performances. Well, not so bad, but mismatched. The Dracula guy and his brides were so cheesy and over the top that they were often LOL bad. Intentionally, I thought, with their "Draan-sill-vain-ee-uhnnnnn!" accents that came and went, and their over-emoting, and their CGI-distending lower jaws and mouths full of pointy teeth that hardly ever bit anything. Igor was non-stop comic relief, the creepy old albino grave digger was amusing, Van Helsing's side kick was funny, and most of the random villagers were comic relief while being carried away by swarms of tiny vampire things.
The problem is that the leads thought they were playing Hamlet. Hugh Jackman was emoting up a storm as the grim hero with a torturd past, and if he smiled in the film I missed it. His performance was flawed by the random sarcastic side comments he constantly threw to his sidekick, most of which played like they'd been dubbed in during post production when some movie executive decided the movie needed more jokes. Beside him stood (On high heeled boots. In the snow.) Kate Beckinsale, who is about as good an actress as most other beautiful white women. She's a model, in other words, and if she has a facial expression or any sort of acting ability, they've yet to materialize in the screen. She doesn't have a personality either, so she's the same woman in every movie, but at least here her blandly-grim determination matched Jackman's in completely not fitting into the rest of the film.
The capper might be Frankenstein's Monster, who features in the opening, then turns up again halfway through as this tragic, noble, caring, doomed figure. Who happens to be 7 feet tall with one of those Shaper Image
lightning globes inside his skull. The Frankenstein monster as a melancholy, tragic, misunderstood figure works better when he's not obviously CG, and in any event, he blended into this cartoonish picture about as well as a clown at a funeral.
Of all the films, Harry Potter 3 was the only good one, and it still wasn't very good. It's the one where Sirius Black escapes from prison and comes to Hoggwarts in dog form, and they find out Ron's rat is the traitor in hiding and the ending has a bunch of ridiculous time travel shenanigans. It wasn't bad, and the performances and sets and special effects are all pretty good, but the movie suffers for being on commercial TV. You realize just how episodic and choppy the flow is when every sequence of scenes is broken up by 10 commercials for plug in air fresheners and frozen pasta dinners and and Comcast high speed internet service. Sure, I fast forward over them, but I'm using a VCR, not DVR, and it takes long enough that I can see what I'm missing, and long enough that I fade out of the involvement I felt with the film; especially since every time they return from commercial the movie has jumped forward several weeks in time, as it tries to cover a full school year and all of Harry's exploits in 120 minutes.
Anyway, complaints about film quality and commercial selection/lenth aside, I obviously didn't mind too much or I wouldn't have watched them all. I don't care enough to check the tv listings to see what's on tomorrow night, though. And no, I don't usually do movies, but I enjoy something to watch while eating, and I've been putting in very long hours on the computer (working, for a change) and it's nice to unplug my brain and sit facing a glowing box that's not internet capable.
Labels: commercials, harry potter, movies
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Ten more reasons to be glad you didn't get Vista...
And I thought the price and lack of functional video drivers was reason enough! This article lists the
top ten annoying things about Vista, and honestly, most of them are headscratchers or even showstoppers. Any two of those would keep me from wanting the OS -- all ten? Perhaps it's all an ingenious scheme to make us all retroactively appreciate XP more?
Home Basically-There's-No-Reason-to-Buy-This
The cheapest version of Vista, Home Basic, is so crippled it can't run the Aero interface. Theoretically, that's a boon for owners of machines that aren't capable of running Aero.
But it's time for some tough love, people: If your PC can't run Aero, you have no need for Vista. Period. On machines that aren't Aero-capable, the rest of the OS will run slowly enough that you're better off sticking with XP until it's time to buy a new Vista PC. So why does Home Basic exist? So Microsoft can say that Vista costs "as little as $100."
Not fixable: Unless you consider not buying Vista Home Basic a fix.
The Large-Print Edition
If you like your current desktop-icon layout, you won't like what you see when you upgrade to Vista. Perhaps overly enamored with Vista's new photo-realistic icons, Microsoft went all AARP-friendly on us and bumped up the default size for desktop icons. That's okay, we guess. Plenty of people want bigger icons. Problem is, Vista's upgrade installation makes this layout-destroying change without asking you. And if you want to move all your icons back to their appointed places, you'll have to find the icon-size setting in its new location.
Fixable: Right-click your desktop and choose View, Classic Icons. Then spend far too long dragging your icons back to their proper positions. When you're done, you'll notice that the shortcut arrow now covers approximately a quarter of each supposedly beautiful new icon.
Kthx. I'm upgrading in a few weeks, and unsurprisingly, Vista is not part of my desired bundle. You have to wonder about MS; it's not like they were rushing out Vista to make the holiday season; they missed Xmas anyway, and it's not as if a new OS was on top of anyone's Xmas list anyway. So why didn't they take another few months to get more functional drivers, to fix some of the pointlessly-annoying "features" everyone hates, etc? What's the deal? MS has an unlimited budget and resources, so why can't they get the large or small things right?
Labels: computers, microsoft, vista
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Because it's the weekend...
... and I had a hard week, and have a lot of work to do this weekend. That's the answer.
The question? Why do I feel justified in eating a plate of dates and cashews for a breakfast snack. Following that (some hours later) with bread soaked in olive oil and covered with monterey jack and mozerella cheese, then toasted, and washed down with the last half cup of a peppery zinfindel. Then making a late lunch of a bowl of stick pretzels, salted/roasted peanuts, and Hawaiian BBQ potato chips, washed down with Pepsi.
Hey, I currently weigh less than I have in 5 years, and if I were eating this in a bar while watching college football, instead of working on a website for a largely-imaginary video game, no one would bat an eye. I'll have some real food for dinner, I promise. Probably salad, as my
box 'o weeds is rapidly composting itself, as it always does on the third day.
Labels: food, misc
Neither Dog nor Dog Catcher
As the old saying goes, "He couldn't even be elected dog catcher." I'm not real clear on what this means; are dog catchers even elected? Is that really the worst job you can think of? Why not sewage maintenence technician?
At any rate, that's the saying people use for unelectable people, and as this recent US Gallup poll shows, it still applies most strongly to atheists. (I had a table here, but blogger won't accept it without mangling the HTML, so forgive the crappy layout.)
If your party nominated a well-qualified Candidate For President in 2008 who was _______, would you vote for that person?
Catholic: 95% yes, 4% no.
Black: 94% yes, 4% no.
Jewish: 92% yes, 7% no.
A woman: 88% yes, 11% no.
Hispanic: 87% yes, 12% no.
Mormon: 72% yes, 24% no.
Married for the third time: 67% yes, 30% no.
72 years old: 57% yes, 42% no.
A homosexual: 55% yes, 43% no.
An atheist: 45% yes, 53% no.
Lots of these are kinda trick questions: McCain will be 72, Clinton's a woman, Obama's a black, one of the leading Republicans is a Mormon, and Guliani is on his third marrriage. I wonder how many of the people replying realized that. Furthermore, I'm skeptical about the inclusion in lots of these figures, since people are more open and less racial in polls than in real life (as the current 95%+ white/male/Christian demographic of senators/congressmen/presidents demonstrates).
One thing I don't doubt at al though is that atheists are still furthest down on the ladder. I guess it's a good sign that gays are no longer the least-electable group in the US, and those figures might even be accurate; there are a few openly-gay national politicians, but none who are openly atheistic. As I clumsily attempted to allude to in the post title, you've got to be a god catcher to be a dog catcher, and most Americans still think religious faith is important in a position of national leadership, even as fewer and fewer of us retain it in our own lives.
Labels: atheism, politics
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Valentine's Gift Giving
I was in Trader Joe's yesterday evening, and noticed to my bemusement that of the other male shoppers there, at least 75% were alone, and buying nothing but flowers, with perhaps candy or a card. In the twelve items or less line I was in, the three guys in front of me all had nothing but a bouquet (a cheap one with just one or two types of flowers, since that's the only kind TJ's sells) and a smile. Ahh, romance.
It occurred to me, while I observed, that V-day is really the only holiday when last minute shopping it not only acceptable, but encouraged. It's practical in one way; it isn't as if you can buy flowers a week in advance and wrap them and hide them in the back closet -- well you could, but your gift would not be received as warmly. You could try that with chocolate or a teddy bear or other such purchase, and at least a little advance planning is required to get anything more expensive and decorative, such as jewelry. But for the most part, men are expected to stop by a florist, or supermarket-based fascimile thereof, and pick up something colorful and fragrant and mortal for their beloved. Pity other holidays don't work like that, eh?
What if all you had to get your wife for Xmas was a live wreath of holly? Or a poinsettia in a shiny-wrapped pot? And you could pick it up on the evening of the 25th and pass it over without ceremony, and 1) know you'd done your duty, and 2) prepare to receive your sweet lovin'-based reward? Or if you could just get a card on the way home on her birthday, and that was all she ever really expected?
Of course that's all a lot of men do, and that's all a lot of women have learned to expect, but my point is that on V-day, supposedly the pinnacle of romance (in our US, Hallmark-skewed culture), it's perfectly acceptable to present a token of your affection that would land you in the doghouse for a month on other ceremonial occasions.
Labels: holidays, relationships
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Interesting Reading: Playboy and Lincoln
I've found a few excellent online articles this week, and thought I'd share.
First,
check out this article in The Atlantic. It's about Playboy Magazine, Lad Mags, and more generally about feminism's effect on and reaction to men of the Playboy era, vs. what the Lad Mags of today represent. There's some interesting talk about Playboy back in the culturally-relevant days, before Hef became a "human bellbottom." Playboy was always an airbrushed fantasy, but it had some worth as well, largely thanks to the no-nonsense Playboy Advisor column, which imparted (to the article's author, at least) a sense of the changes a boy made as he became a man and began dallying with women -- real women, who were rather unlike the ones lolling on silk sheets through the rest of the magazine.
But over time these exchanges left me with the distinct impression that love--or even just good sex--was often quite complicated, requiring of its participants an almost unnerving degree of trust and vulnerability, patience and negotiation, all of which could lead to unimaginable thrills or horrible disappointment. Or anything in between. It was here, in the Advisor, where Playboy willfully undercut the silken ease and bachelor suavity it projected elsewhere in the magazine. It was here where bodily matters went unairbrushed, where seduction proved beyond one’s skillful way with imported vodka, where men would not infrequently be scolded for treating their girlfriends or wives shabbily.
The lengthy article quotes some typical exchanges, talks more about the cultural relevance of Playboy and the author's own maturity, and then gets to a compare/contrast to the content and attitude presented by today's "Lad Mags."
There’s hardly a trace of the old journalism, and no fiction, but there are the numerous girlie pictorials, in this case teasingly non-nude; the gadgetry and the spiffy autos; the obligatory fashion spreads. However, where the sexes are concerned in lad land, it’s almost completely separate but equal, which is to say equally puerile. These mags are full of bravado (not limited to the guys) about hooking up, but otherwise, basically, the twain never meet: you might score with the opposite sex, but you hang out with your own—which perfectly captures a sensibility people my age (fortyish) tended to ditch before they left their teens, and which indicates that the average lad finds girlfriend scary...
Aside from the C-list starlets, who come off like well-bred dames in this context, the majority of laddie girls profess exactly the interests of the lads themselves: roughhousing, football, beer chugging, NASCAR, girl-on-girl, muscle cars and motorcycles, pro wrestling, video games, burping, and being as dumb as humanly possible. In short, these women are but lads with tits, making all the leering that presumably goes on among readers of these mags curiously akin to looking across the table at your poker buddy, imagining him as a woman, and wanting to get nice.
The author ties things up nicely with a return to feminism vs. men's magazine psychology. He points out (not in these words) that while men of the Playboy era were sometimes seen as rough-edged, it was in a Hemingway or Sean Connery as James Bond kind of way. They were men's men, but they were men, not boys, and they had plenty of attributes that made them appealing to women. They weren't afraid of the battle of the sexes, they surrounded themselves with women, and they gave as good as they got. Unlike today's Lad Mag culture, which is basically a Peter Pan existence, where girls burp, fart, join you in playing poker and watching sports, and never tell you to grow up or learn to cook an omelet.
The laddie burlesque of male chauvinism is almost purely a reaction to feminism’s ascendancy, which people of both sexes have long taken for granted. And feminists are quite right to feel unthreatened by the lads’ rebellion. Because in fact, it isn’t a rebellion at all but, rather, a capitulation. It’s as if American masculinity has finally surrendered to decades of feminist criticism, criticism the lads have assimilated fully, because—unlike the Playboy men of yore—they’ve known no other world. One can wish that the lad shtick were subversive minstrelsy of a sort, an absurdist attack on unflattering male stereotypes, but more likely, and all pretend insensitivity aside, the laddies are sadly sincere in their embrace of buffoonery. They’re adopting—before the fact, and with the cold comfort of intent—the very characteristics that would most ensure further criticism, further rejection, which is essentially to take control of defeat by forfeiting the game rather than risk another losing effort. It is, in short, to take control by running away.
I've quoted extensively, but it's a long, three-page article, and well worth a read. I especially enjoyed the allusion to George Orwell's analysis of the penny postcards of his day, and their parallels to and differences from today's Lad Mags.
On an entirely different front, this long, and at times impenetrably-scholarly,
medically-themed biography of Abraham Lincoln is a demanding but fascinating read. It explores the fact that Lincoln was kicked in the head and nearly killed by a horse when he was 9, and that that event and the brain trauma that resulted from it profoundly affected his psyche and adult personality. As well as giving him that iconic, famously bilaterally-asymmetrical face. The article includes a number of high quality photos of The Great Emancipator at different ages, and when you block off one half of the other and compare it's startling how different the right and left sides of his face were.
It wasn't just appearance either; Lincoln suffered from diplopia (double vision) his whole life, a condition that came on when he was tired or anxious, and was exacerbated by reading, of which he did a great deal.
Most people with diplopia learn how to disregard the dimmer visual image by concentrating mentally on the image of the dominant eye. When both eyes are used in focal coordination, volitional effort is necessary, and this eventually produces mental visual fatigue and organic eyestrain tending to cause headache. Under mental or physical fatigue or emotional excitement, visual decoordination increases (as noticed at times in Lincoln by his contemporaries) and the stronger image is underlapped by more or less of a shadowy, weaker image, increasing mental confusion and uneasiness. Lincoln learned in boyhood to cultivate a calm, humorous, patient, kindly attitude and friendly interpersonal assurances, and a common-sense philosophy of life that generally protected him from emotional provocation and increase of this distress. However, he had a singularly impressive mystifying experience with more persistent diplopia after a fatiguing day upon the evening of his election as President. His description and interpretation of this experience to Ward Lamon and Noah Brooks is given in Chapter XLII. The strange mystery of his double vision and its superstitious meaning for him has been cited by many biographers as an indication that Lincoln had clairvoyant sensitivity. It seems evident now that it was the simple result of an old injury of his brain in childhood.
Through his adult years Lincoln had many nervous attacks, characterized by eyestrain and headache with nausea and indigestion, so severe that often he became unable to work and had to lie down with a cold compress over his eyes. He had couches in his law office, at home, and in the White House, for this purpose.
His medical conditions combined with his temperment to give him a predisposition to thoughtfulness, self-analysis, and pauses before speaking. It also gave him a very unusual, memorable appearance.
"Lincoln was a sad looking man whose melancholy dripped from him as he walked." "The look of sadness was more or less accentuated by a peculiarity of one eye [left], the pupil of which had a tendency to turn or roll slightly toward the upper lid, whereas the other one maintained its normal position equidistant between the upper and lower lids." He also noticed that the tip of his nose and mouth turned toward the right. "Mr. Lincoln was a peculiar, mysterious man . . . had a double consciousness, a double life." He "quickly passed from one state of consciousness to another and different state."(Letter to J. Weik, February 21, 1891; Hertz, 1938.)The articles are not biographies, but are medical discussions of Lincoln's life and behavior, based on his chidhood injuries and adult maladies. It's a long read, but a very interesting one, though I must confess to reading it the way Lincoln did when his vision was bothering him, by skimming pages quickly for important points.
Finally,
this long piece in the New Yorker about the TV show
24, the self-described "right wing nut" who writers/produces it, and its perpetual "we must torture bad guys to save 'Murica!" mindset is a good read. I only made it through the first (of three) pages since I've never seen the show and am kind of depressed by the right wing's, much-desired fantasy of being able to mutilate people in order to save the world, but you might get more from it than I did. As others have pointed out, remember when torture was something only bad guys like Russians and Nazis did in movies? 9/11 really did change everything, if we can look back nostalgically at quality entertainment such as
Rambo II for lessons in humane ethics.
Labels: misc, playboy
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Sometimes, things are heavy.
I've been known to post despairing/disparaging items about cashiers and customer service in the past, and while I try to be understanding, sometimes it's just too funny. Cashiers can't really help it; they're simply not too bright, which is why they're cashiers instead of people with more important, influential jobs. Like aspiring fantasy novelists.
Today's drama unfolded at The Sports Authority. A sporting goods store with a pretentious name they really don't come anywhere near living up to. I went in to pick up a pair of dumbbells, since I haven't been getting to the gym very much lately, and I've long wanted some weights to lift at home, in my idle moments. They had a plentiful selection, and at $.59 a pound they were relatively affordable. I planned on buying my weights at Play It Again Sports, but like most things in that allegedly discount, used sporting goods store, the weights cost more than they do new in a real sporting goods store. Play It Again Sports' pricing policy is just one of those mysteries, like the $6 popcorn they sell at movies, that I will never understand.
Anyway, I browsed the shoes and clothing for a bit, before selecting a pair of 30 pound (13kg) dumbbells and carrying them up to the front. There wasn't much of a line, but I wasn't straining; I can do a fair number of reps with that weight, and just holding them wasn't a problem. Still, I was a little bit gratified when the counter groaned as I eased them down. The cashier was looking right at me when I put them there, and after making me
weight wait a moment while she answered the ringing phone just long enough to put the caller on hold, she rung up my dumbbells, took my money, gave me change and then started to get a big bag out for the weights.
Now let's be realistic; there's no way a cheap plastic bag designed to hold shoeboxes and t-shirts is going to be strong enough to hold together under 30 pounds of weight. Much less 60, if she put them both in the same bag. And she'd have had to, since when you think about it, what's the point in putting each one in their own bag? How would that help me carry them any more easily than leaving them out and separate?
I said, "There's no way that bag will hold the weight." and she looked at me, bovinely, and continued unfolding the bag. So I just stood there and watched as she flapped it open, put it on the counter, and then tried to pick up one of the weights with her right arm.
"Hwhoof." she grunted. Yes, it was definitely a grunt, a beautifully-exhaled one too. I bit back a giggle, and snorted a bit when she tried again, this time using a "Urrrhh." to lift one dumbbell approximately one inch up off of the counter. She put it down and looked at it the same way Jinxie looks at the wall when I shine the laser pointer at it, and at that point I couldn't take any more and pocketed my receipt, picked up the weights, and toted them out of the store.
Laughing while I walked through the rain to my car, I tried to figure out what had been going through her head. As best I could tell, she'd never mentally processed what I was buying, and the fact that it was heavy. So my remark about the bag not holding it hadn't registered, and right up until the point that she actually lifted the dumbbell, she had no idea what it was, or that it weighed more than a Twinkie. That first grunt must have been as much from surprise as from the weight, and it wasn't until the second try that her mental hamsters spit out their alfalfa pellets and started running fast enough for her to process the data she was receiving from her various sensory apparatus.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if I'd given her another minute or two. Would she have just asked me to carry them out? Struggled more to stick them in a bag without realizing the futility of that gesture? Stood there helplessly while waiting for her mental computer to reboot? Called for carryout assistance? I'll never know, but I'll always cherish the memory of her first surprised, "Hwhoof?" I'll just try not to cherish it too much while I'm actually lifting the weights myself, since when I got home and did some curls I started thinking about the incident, laughed, and nearly dropped the weights on my bare feet.
Labels: fitness, shopping
Out of Our Misery
So Anna Nicole Smith dropped dead from some sort of mixed drug overdose (no, I'm not going to put in a link) and it's been all over the news the last couple of days. I realize our media and culture is celebrity-obsessed like never before (
bread and circuses), and I'm not going to
join the crowd bemoaning the intensive coverage of this meaningless event while important news from Iraq goes ignored, but seriously... WTF?
I had no idea why she was in the news the last year or so with her baby daddy drama and overdosing son and other crap, and I have no idea why anyone cares that she's dead. Was anyone actually an Anna Nicole Smith fan? What had she ever done in her entire life to be worthy of anyone's admiration or attention? She was a trailer park blonde who stripped and had some amazing success gold-digging a senile oil tycoon, then achieved a moment of infamy 15 years ago in jeans ads and plus-size Playboy pictorials. True, in a world where reality TV stars become celebrities based on being stupid or frequently nude, Anna had more credentials to fame than most, but my god I was sick of hearing her name.
I'm relieved she's dead, frankly, in the same way I would (will) be relieved if (when) it's Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan or Pete Doherty or any of the other overexposed, talentless, junkie whores who so undeservedly dominate our pop culture. True, their deaths come with a price; greatly-increased media coverage for a few days, but then they're quickly forgotten, aside from inevitable melodramatic TV movies and annual retrospectives on E! and VH1.
Sadly, the real tragedy is that unless/until our culture changes, our parasitic bottom-feeding media will continue along the same track, and less time spent on Anna Nicole Smith just means more time spent on other, equally-loathsome "celebrities." Remind me of this in six months when I'm lamenting the media coverage of Paris Hilton's latest engagement, or Lindsey Lohan's latest overdose.
Labels: celebs, death
Friday, February 09, 2007
Carpe Diem
I encountered this short poem by Dorothy Parker during some recent reading, and liked it enough to repeat it. I think it so perfectly sums up the problem with taking
carpe diem to its full, hedonistic extent.
The Flaw in Paganism
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
Labels: writing
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Video Games Improve Eye Sight
Some news you'll probably read about on every tech and gaming site on Earth over the next few days (if you haven't already), there's
good news for gamers:
A study by the University of Rochester showed that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their vision by about 20 percent.
"Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information," Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, said in the study published on the university's Web site, www.rochester.edu, on Tuesday.
"These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life."
It's not all good news though, when you get to the details.
Bavelier and a graduate student tested college students who had played very few, if any, video games in the last year.
Test subjects were given an eye test similar to the one used at regular eye clinics and then divided into two groups -- one played shoot-em-up action games for an hour a day while the control group played a less visually complex game.
Their vision was tested after the study, with those who played the action game scoring better in the eye test.
So it's only intense action games, ones that obviously require your eyes to move a lot and refocus and such, and it's only confirmed to help if you don't play a lot of games already. I don't now, though I hope to if the HGL beta ever gets going, but it's not clear if people who have played such games for most of their lives get any continuing or ongoing benefit, or if 8 hours a day burns your retina out, etc. More study would be nice. How does this compare to a real life activity that requires the same kind of eye motion? Playing ping pong or skeet shooting, for instance?
I've long wondered about my eyes, and their continued function. I'm 29 (again) and still have good vision. It's not as sharp as it once was, and I haven't been offically tested in many years, but I'm still 20/20 or better, judging by the eye charts I see on the wall at Costco or when I drive Malaya to her optometrist. Eyes aren't all genetic, but both my parents needed heavy prescriptions before their teens, so I've clearly beaten that curve. Is it (partially) thanks to the hours of video games I played virtually every day as a child and teen? Could the slight blurring of small print at a distance I've been noticing over the last few years be reversed if I started playing a theraputic hour a day of a game both fast-moving and action-packed?
I guess I have no choice... doctor's orders.
Labels: gaming, medical
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Now "Completely Heterosexual"
This headline had me laughing out loud, so perhaps you'll enjoy it as well. It's about one of the prominent right wing Christian ministers who was recently brought down by scandal after a male prostitute came forward with proof that the Reverend used to
call him for hook ups.
DENVER - One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual."
Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition.
"He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing."
When I read this sort of thing, I almost feel sorry for the hard core Christians. True, they pretty much bring it on themselves with their ridiculous attitudes and prejudices, but it must be hard to live life burdened by such ideological blinkers. Haggard has lived his whole life talking about how homosexuality is a sin and an evil, has married and had children (I think), while secretly knowing he was gay, or at least bi-sexual. He fought his natural urges, but he could never quite overcome them, and by making faggotry such a taboo, and always talking about it, he ensured he was always thinking about it. Imagine how guilt-ridden he was after one of his clandestine sexual encounters? How much self-loathing he felt for his desires?
It's almost sad. What's funny is one of his brainwashed colleagues making his "completely heterosexual" pronouncement, and believing it! Of course Haggard still has the same urges he's always had; he just has a new handle on denying them. Imagine how much happier he would be if he could dump his harpy wife, drop his bullshit version of Christianity, and go live as he wanted to, working somewhere in a real job and doing hot guys he met on Craig's List?
Incidentally, doesn't his picture get creepier the longer you look at it? At first he's kind of a used car salesman, then he's an asshole boss, and then, as you look longer, you start to see hatred and rage bottled up behind that intense grin and those gleaming eyes. They're lucky they found live male whores, rather than dead Boy Scouts, in this guy's wake.
Labels: gay, religion
Monday, February 05, 2007
Su-Pa-Bo!
Malaya and me ran errands Sunday afternoon, and worked clearing out some space on the patio and rearranging plants and such. Finally, around 6:30 we ordered a pizza and killed some time in blockbuster while they cooked it, before taking it home and sitting down to eat and watch the game on tape. We buzzed through the whole thing in about an hour, so if you're looking for reaction to the commercials, you'll have to look elsewhere, since I didn't watch a one.
I hadn't paid much attention to the game during the run up; I made my prediction a couple of weeks ago and said I wasn't going to waste any time on the pregame hype. And for the most part, I did not. I read the Sports Guy's humor columns from Miami, and glanced over the expert picks on ESPN.com, but I didn't read any big game previews or pay attention to the analysis. And I think I was happier for it. I was certainly more productive, during the past week of not surfing sports news (other than daily NBA score checks).
My prediction wasn't very good;
Indy won 29-17, after I'd predicted they would win 20-16. I was correct on the victor, but since the spread was Indy by 7, I would have lost money had I been foolish enough to wager some. I was almost very accurate; Indy led 22-17 in the 3rd quarter, and the only additional points came on a long interception return, but let's be honest; Indy could have scored more if they'd needed to in the 4th quarter. They were moving the ball at will; they were just playing it really safe and handing off a lot to keep the clock running, and since they could clearly see that the Bears' offense wasn't capable of driving anywhere.
I didn't read many game predictions, but was surprised to see how many people had picked quite high scores. Lots of the "experts" were saying something like 38-31, and while I could imagine the Colts putting up more than 30 points (thought I thought it unlikely), but how in the hell did anyone think the Bears were going to? They scored 39 on New Orleans in the NFC Championship, but half of that came in garbage time on a short field after NO kept failing on 4th down desperation attempts. In the Superbowl the Bears scored 17, but that came on a kick off return, a 57 yard drive of which about 55 came on one run, and a field goal after a short drive thanks to an Indy turn over. They only gained 250 yards and had under 22 minutes time of possession -- their offense wasn't any good and I could see them winning, but only if the field conditions were poor and the Bears' defense played really well.
They got the field; it rained heavily through most of the game, but the Bears' D was not much of a factor. Really, Indy should have had a blow out; they kicked 3 short field goals and missed a 4th, and fumbled another time in scoring position, so they could easily have had 10 more points, and could have scored at least another TD in the 4th quarter if they'd needed to. In retrospect, I should have made a bolder prediction based on the conferences. All 4 of the final AFC teams were pretty clearly better than any team from the NFC, and after Indy beat Baltimore in Baltimore, and then outlasted NE in a shootout at home, why did anyone seriously think the offenseless-Bears could beat them on a neutral field?
That being said, what if the Bears had won? Say Indy dropped that interception they returned, and the Bears got a fluke TD late, and Indy couldn't come back. Who the hell is the MVP? They never give it to anyone on the losing team, and Payton's numbers weren't really very good. Indy's running game was great, but their two running backs split the numbers pretty evenly, and thus split their MVP votes. But who on the Bears would deserve the honor? Their QB was horrible, their running game was nothing aside from one 55 yard scamper, and no one on the defense did anything special. You couldn't give it to Hester, their return guy, not for touching the ball once in the entire game, and even if they gave out group awards, why would you reward their defense for giving up 450 yards? It might have been a repeat of the Baltimore win from a few years ago, when they gave it to their QB who did nothing but fail to lose it while the great, Ray Lewis-lead defense won the game -- except that Grossman threw two interceptions and looked consistently awful.
Anyway, that's it for football until September, and not-coincidentally, that's about it for me watching TV until next fall. I enjoy the occasional basketball game, but theere aren't any other sports I care about enough to watch on TV (well, maybe when Tiger's winning a major I'll tune in on a Sunday afternoon) and basically I only watch whatever Malaya's turned on, when we're in the same room at the same time. It's for the best anyway; more time to work, or not work, on my computer!
Labels: football
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Figure Skating
Ever wonder why it's always the men doing the lifting and carrying in figure skating pairs, and not the women? Well now you know.
Labels: sports
Friday, February 02, 2007
Band Names Mail
I last updated the content in the
Band Names section sometime in late 2002, and while I would love to go over it and add in more bands and update the existing entries, I can't see that happening any time soon. I just have too many other time-consuming priorities for the immediate forever. I am glad I put in the hours to get that section online though, primarily since it has generated such a steady string of amusing (to me) reader feedback. (A couple of years worth I'd lazily not posted were tragically lost in my hard drive crash a few months ago.)
The mails are easily classified into two distinct camps. 1) "You suck or saying Band A sucks!" and the converse, 2) "You suck for
not saying Band B sucks!" I suppose there have been a few praising emails from people who got the joke and managed not to take offense at my comments about their favorite band (while enjoying the comments about every other band on there), but those are few and far between. And honestly, less amusing/interesting to me than the (attempted) flames.
I bring this up because, as you've long since guessed, another of the "what joke?" type ones came in yesterday. Yes, I'll share:
Regarding your shallow and uninformed comments about Frank Zappa. The phrase is: "Necessity is the Mother of Invention". I realize you're probably just a youngish dolt, and have no real idea about, or interest in the history of bands from the '60's. Or in words, or phrase, or language for that matter.
Some of the goofy comments you make about the bands based on their names shows your lack of depth about the band and where the name came from. Someone with more commitment and love of the subject would make this a very cool site. It wouldn't matter if that wasn't your particular decade of teenagerism.
Thanks gramps. I think some dust puffed out of my ethernet cable when this hunk of yellowing parchment landed. Here's a link to
Frank Zappa's entry.
This guy isn't quite as clueless as some, but really, isn't this just the 60 y/o's version of the PissedOffToolFan mail now on top of
the feedback page? Youthful passion and stupidity has mellowed into senior disapproval and dismay at what the world's coming to?
Incidentally, it's a subject for another blog and a writer both older and more knowledgeable on the subject, but don't you think there's a clear generational divide between the Boomers/Hippies and everyone younger than them, in their attitude towards music? I grew up with Mtv and hair metal and gangster rap and Nu Metal and other crap of that ilk, most of which was obviously disposable garbage meant only for a moment's amusement. It's almost inconceivable to me that a rock band would have anything worthwhile to say, or that anyone would really care about a musical group. Listen to them and enjoy their music, sure. But actually care what they were about or what they stood for? WTF?
People closer to my parents' age though are still have a reverence for rock music as an Important Thing. They grew up worshipping the Beatles and all the Woodstock hippy bands, and in their youth music was going to change the world, and rock bands were a leading force behind the anti-Vietnam revolution. It gives them an entirely different mindset from my, "rock musicians are stupid junkie drunks who should be mocked," and as when they (the older readers) see an irrerevant and obviously-intentionally "shallow" and "uninformed" feature like my band names section, they get offended on some internal level. They
Back to the Frank Zappa fan... what else is there to say? I don't care if someone finds the band names entries funny or not; it just saddens me when people don't realize they're (attempted) humor. If someone mailed to say I couldn't write and that I wasn't funny, I'd be inconsolable, but at least I'd know they got that it was a joke! It's the people who really seem to have no idea that the whole thing is intentionally shallow and mistake-filled and ignorant that make my head hurt.
Also, and this is equally-perplexing... I've received at least half a dozen emails about the Frank Zappa entry over time, and I'm sure that's more than my listing of any other artist has generated. And it's Frank Zappa...? He's been dead for a decade, he never really had any big hits, and I don't even say anything actually mean about him. I expected mails about modern bands from clueless 14 y/o's like PissedOffToolFan, and hoped for a gaggle of fury from some boy band forum at some point, but I can honestly say I never expected to get an email about Frank Zappa. I only included him since he's on the Z page, and aside from Rob Zombie and ZZ Top, who the hell else am I going to put there? If Zappa were spelled Szappa or something like that (sounds like a sparking water from Switzerland, doesn't it?) I would never have thought to include him, since he just wasn't that famous and has never been relevant during my lifetime. So whence cometh the emails about him? Is my entry linked from some Frank Zappa resource or wikipedia or what? I tried googling his name and the name of his band and my page didn't show up in the first few pages. It's a mystery.
Also, this is completely OT, but I just looked over the Band Names FAQ and the last question lists resources for finding actual information about the bands. Which is fine, and I remember surfing those when I was "researching" the section (all the better to make intentional errors). The funny part is that there's no wikipedia listing. That's how old the Band Names pages are... I did them before wikipedia was a useful resource for pop culture info! Now I'd make wikipedia my first and probably last stop for info about anything added to that section, though the encyclopedia with standards style of wikipedia wouldn't help much with half assed guesses about actual band name origins.
Labels: band-names, mailbag
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