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after the dark knight [Jul. 21st, 2008|11:42 am]
I'll probably post some kind of commentary on encyclops.com about the film itself, though I always find it harder to write about things I love than things I hate. It's sort of like how a perfect essay just comes back with a big "A+" on it and no other red marks; what can you say about a uniformly excellent movie that does it justice except "go see the movie"?

What I want to do here, because I have lj-cut, is talk about my guesses for the NEXT movie. Obviously this contains spoilers, but I hope you come back and participate in the discussion after you've seen it...assuming this is your cup of tea at all.

guesses for the third Nolan/Goyer Batman movie (spoilers) )
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years in music meme [Jul. 13th, 2008|11:19 am]
From [info]thirdreel I stole the following meme, whose rules I formalized to my own liking:
  1. Using Wikipedia's "Years In Music" entries, and only the albums listed in those entries, choose one album from each year you've been alive.
  2. You may only choose one album by each artist.
  3. Do not list compilations, reissues, greatest hits collections, or live albums. Soundtracks are OK.
  4. Ideally you're choosing your favorite album from each year, except where this would conflict with the first three rules.
  5. If you like, you can list up to three runners-up, including albums you could just as easily have chosen if not for rule #2.

The exercise took me WAY too long, but it was sort of fun. It felt like a time-travelling jigsaw puzzle. Often I had to pick albums which weren't my favorite of the year, or albums which weren't my favorites by those artists (e.g. I prefer Propaganda to Kimono My House, and Now I'm a Cowboy to Bootboys), just to fit them in and obey the rules.

I cheated once, by choosing The Sunlandic Twins even though it wasn't listed in Wikipedia. That allowed me to keep Felt Mountain in the toss-up between that and Supernature. A lot of albums were obviously missing; I only saw one Robyn Hitchcock in any of the lists.

The best years for music, according to Wikipedia's lists and my tastes, were 1979 - 1989, 1993, and 1998. The worst were 1991, 1994, 1996, 1999, and 2006. 1984 was particularly awesome, but I knew that already.

I chose my albums based on how I feel about them today, and not on how I felt about them then, particularly since I hadn't heard all those albums in those years. I feel pretty good about all my choices except for 2007 -- I liked all those albums but none of them, including The Con, is likely to be a lasting favorite of mine.

one favorite album for every year I've been alive )

After this I am totally swearing off memes that take more than 10 minutes to do. It's embarrassing and dismaying how much time I spent on this.
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BOO [Jul. 9th, 2008|11:46 pm]
You and your peak oil links, [info]pjoseph! I'm all freaking out now and hiding behind the couch.

I don't believe in ghosts, but ghost stories still scare the crap out of me. And I don't think peak oil is a ghost. Or more accurately, I don't think the likely economic scenarios resulting from decreased oil supply and increased demand are phantoms, at least not entirely.

It seems like some people are thinking we'll have some rough times and then come out the other side riding alternative energy. It's hard to see how that would work if we need petroleum to produce pretty much every artifact of modern first-world living.

Meanwhile other people are convinced we're a year or three away from anarchy, fascism, and a New Dark Age. Part of me thinks these people are relishing the prospect -- they're cut from the same cloth as the survivalists and can't wait until they can live a self-sufficient life, presumably armed to the teeth so they can fend off scroungers dressed as the villains from Ayn Rand novels.

And part of me thinks they're the ones who are right.

Anybody have any good news?
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wishin off burma [Jul. 9th, 2008|05:13 pm]
I've been trying to wean myself off the fetishistic need to buy physical CDs of new music, unless it's something I REALLY want.

Physical CDs take up a lot of room, I have WAY too many to store already, and obviously they use up physical resources (petroleum, trees) in their manufacture and delivery. There's the sound quality advantage, but mostly I listen to music on mp3 and don't really pay attention to the difference.

However, physical CDs do have one big advantage over mp3s: when you buy and download a supposed classic album, such as oh, say, Mission of Burma's Signals, Calls, and Marches, and you discover it's really massively overrated (especially compared to Wire, as they often are), you can't sell it to anyone and get any of your money back.
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[Jul. 7th, 2008|01:27 pm]
Stolen from [info]djturtle18.

Below is the Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 Classic Movies of the past 25 years.
Bold the ones you've seen, underline the ones you plan to. I'll add a new rule: italicize the ones you saw but wish you hadn't.
the 100 movies )
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on whittling down the time i waste on subpar books [Jun. 30th, 2008|02:27 pm]
Should I actually read Asimov's Foundation or just skim a summary somewhere? So far it's boring me to death. Does it get better or is it just paper dolls talking to each other the whole time?
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permanence and persistence [Jun. 19th, 2008|08:57 pm]
permanence
I think I mentioned that this year's Thing I've Never Done Before for my birthday was gonna be "get a tattoo." I resolved that I'd either do it this year or never do it. But James Bond has taught me to never say never again, and 33.66 years' experience as me has taught me that I can barely stand to look at the same cell phone wallpaper for a week straight, so how can I commit to a tattoo I haven't even designed yet?

Upshot: I won't say that it will never happen, but it probably won't happen this year. I have four months left, so you never know, but outlook not so good.

persistence
I'm swamped with work right now, not just at my day job but at 2, now 3 freelance gigs that have hit me all at once. It's good, because I'll make extra money, but bad, because I'll just turn around and spend it on travel, something I want to do a lot less of next year.

Meanwhile, I'm obsessed with Battlestar Galactica. 10 episodes then silence for the rest of the year...it's criminal. I'm trying hard to breathe deeply and convince myself I can wait to see who the last Cylon is, and that it's probably going to be a cheap trick of some kind. Fortunately I'm just to the left of "Pegasus" in my rewatching of the series, and by my calculations, if I can watch one episode a week from this point on I'll be done toward the end of January. Then I can rewatch this season, any webisodes they do, and any TV movies they slot in, and that should get me to March.

It's weird; I don't generally get this into a TV show while it's on the air. And it's not even about caring what happens to specific characters, like a lot of fans do; it's not that I don't care, but that I see them all as part of this grand story, and it's the story I'm hooked on. I don't think the show is perfect; they've had to rush a lot of stuff this season and there were a lot of missed opportunities. But it's compelling in a way that no other show has been for me, except maybe The Prisoner, which grapples with some of the same issues and creates mysteries on the same scale, albeit in a more allegorical vein.

So in the meantime I'm trying to think of a good sci-fi film I haven't seen, to help with my addiction. A lot of the ones I have waiting for me aren't the spacefaring type (like Strange Days or The Thirteenth Floor), and some of the ones I do have are not likely to be much more than eye-candy, if that (The Chronicles of Riddick).

What are your favorite ships-in-space movies, preferably ones that aren't based on TV shows?
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'ology meme [Jun. 5th, 2008|11:18 pm]
Stolen from [info]itakemymedicine who stole it from [info]orneryboy. This is how diseases are spread, kittens.

'OLOGY MEME - Stolen from orneryboy:

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A. Light and Ryuzaki from Death Note, looking crafty and pensive, respectively.

Q. How many televisions do you have in your house?
A: Two, but we only use one.

BIOLOGY

Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
A: Right.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A: I had warts frozen off my feet once. Hope you weren't eating!

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
A: Some wire shelving things we just bought from Target.

BULLSHITOLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
A. No -- I'd get way too anal about trying to make the most of my remaining time. It's bad enough as it is; I think I need to waste time to stay sane.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
A: Something that doesn't appear in the Bible. I've always liked Brian because it sounds like "briar," and I like "Jason" even though it does appear in the Bible. I'd go for something more exotic but I'm practical when it comes to names. In a way I did change my name, though, dropping the first syllable in seventh grade, and that's what most people call me today. I don't have a problem with my given name now, but back then I didn't like being named after someone else and wanted my own identity.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
A. Black, though people say green's good too.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
A: Not knowingly, I don't think.

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
A: I'd do it for free if they were cute. :) Or were you asking if I would pay them? No way! Supply far exceeds demand.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
A. No way.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. Sure, depending on why someone wanted to pay that much to stop me.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
A. I'd probably consider it, actually. That's a lot of scratch and it would change my life. I don't think I'd be ashamed to do it, though it might lead to an epidemic of blindness, one way or the other.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
A: Nah.

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
A. To be totally honest...depending on what they had done, I might consider it. I wouldn't kill some random innocent person for any amount of money, but if you mean would I pull the switch on a confessed, proven serial killer who would be executed anyway...I seriously might. I have very mixed feelings about capital punishment. Sorry if that makes me a bad person.

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. My cell phone. Usually my wallet is in there too, or a bandanna I use as a handkerchief, depending on which pants.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A: Yeah, I really liked it. Those personalities were really familiar to me.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. Carpet.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
A: Who sits in the shower?!

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
A: I think I have three right now, maybe four. I KNOW, I know.

LASTOLOGY

Q: Last person who texted you?
A: An improv pal. It was a mass-texting letting us know where to meet for dinner before the show.

Q: Last person who called you?
A: My girlfriend.

Q: Person you hugged?
A: My girlfriend!

FAVORITOLOGY

Q: Number?
A: 3? 26? I never really thought about having one.

Q: Season?
A: I like them all. Seriously. Not that we have seasons out here.

Q: Color?
A: Green.

CURRENTOLOGY

Q: Missing someone?
A: I have friends who are far away....

Q: Mood?
A: Coping.

Q: Listening to?
A: The aquarium (containing a crab and five fish) running water.

Q: Watching?
A: The crab pacing on his island, the cats running around, my girlfriend setting up her new plants.

Q: Worrying about?
A: Work, life, love, the future, getting enough sleep. Same as everyone else.

Q: Wearing?
A: Jeans that are almost too loose to wear (15 pounds down and counting!), a polo from Target that says "England's Dreaming," and black Old Navy briefs (I switch between those and 2xist boxer briefs these days).

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning?
A: The bathroom, of course.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
A: Be content and fulfilled. In the short term and the land of things that actually happen: finish my three looming projects and count the cash.

Q: Do you smile often?
A: More than I used to. My face is pretty sour at rest, and I've realized I can just randomly smile at people and they'll appreciate it instead of thinking I'm a freak, so I try to smile as a greeting now. I don't open my mouth, though, because I hate the way my mouth looks when I smile.

Q: Are you a friendly person?
A: Yeah, I tend to cut people an awful lot of slack and forgive people who don't deserve it. I'm not always warm, though, and unfortunately my girlfriend often sees me in shut-down mode because home is the only place I can be introverted and recharge.
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election results are in! [May. 30th, 2008|04:24 pm]
I've been really out of the LJ loop lately -- way way behind on my friends list, so don't worry: I'm not ignoring you, I'm ignoring everybody! Just too much going on, is all. Some solid freelance work at night and heavy project action during the day.

However, I see that LJ is even more what it always has been, now that those elections I paid no attention to are over, and somebody named [info]legomymalfoy* won.




* Not even "leggo," but "lego," which I always thought was a plastic interlocking toy brick.
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theory about earth (bsg) [May. 10th, 2008|03:03 am]
[info]itakemymedicine came up with a brilliant theory tonight about Earth. Don't read it unless you're caught up on Battlestar Galactica.
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dvd price alerts [May. 7th, 2008|04:37 pm]
Monty Python's Flying Circus complete for $39

The Prisoner complete for $39
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yet another book meme [May. 5th, 2008|09:38 am]
Stolen from [info]primavera: The top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones that are sitting on your shelf unread, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

1984
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (puke)
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Anna Karenina ([info]itakemymedicine owns it but I've never read it)
Beloved
Brave New World
Crime and Punishment
Dracula
Emma
Frankenstein
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
Jane Eyre
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Moby Dick
Mrs. Dalloway
Northanger Abbey
Oliver Twist (I really can't get into Dickens)
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice (I think it's this one...I have some Jane Austen book somewhere)
Sense and Sensibility
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Blind Assassin (among my least favorite Atwoods)
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The God of Small Things
The Hobbit
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
The Prince (if we're talking Machiavelli)
The Silmarillion
The Tale of Two Cities
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
War and Peace
Watership Down
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
Guns, Germs, and Steel (she has it, I want to read it)
Life of Pi : a novel
The Brothers Karamazov
The Iliad
Ulysses (did I understand it? maybe 10%)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values (pretty sure I have it somewhere)
A Clockwork Orange
A Confederacy of Dunces
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Short History of Nearly Everything
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angels & Demons (Da Vinci Code was sort of fun, but this is just crap on every level)
Atlas Shrugged (I read Anthem first, so I dodged this bullet...not sure I still have it)
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cryptonomicon (not the biggest Stephenson fan, though I liked The Diamond Age)
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Foucault’s Pendulum
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Gravity’s Rainbow (I'm about to stop pretending to like Pynchon)
Inferno
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Les Misérables (this is a long motherfucker right here, okay?)
Madame Bovary
Middlesex
Neverwhere
Oryx and Crake
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Slaughterhouse-five
The Aeneid (yawn)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (signed and personalized, but duller than his other books)
The Confusion
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Fountainhead
The Grapes of Wrath
The Historian : a novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (pretty sure I have this somewhere)
The Kite Runner
The Mists of Avalon
The Name of the Rose
The Odyssey
The Once and Future King
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter (puke)
The Sound and the Fury
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Vanity Fair
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
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when humans turn out to be cylons [May. 1st, 2008|04:36 pm]
I started what's turning out to be an interesting discussion on [info]battlestar_blog. I'm curious what those of you who are into the show think of the point I'm trying to make about how the theme "humans and Cylons are kinda the same!" is much less interesting than exploring how the vast differences in the Cylon lifestyle would change their outlook on life.
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hold on to wat [Apr. 28th, 2008|04:28 pm]
I'm not always an old bitter internet senior citizen. There are internetisms I dearly love, at least right now. This is my current favorite.
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banned internet lingo #4457 [Apr. 26th, 2008|11:58 pm]
Banned: the constructs "full of [verb or adjective]" or "made of [verb or adjective]".

Commonly, "full of win" or "made of awesome."

BANNED. It is mathematically impossible to type these phrases more than once in your entire life without sounding like a mega-tool.

Don't even THINK about saying them out loud. You might as well announce that the heels of your palms are flat from typing and that your own IM icon is etched permanently into your retina.

"DO NOT WANT" is cruisin' for a bruisin' as well. Watch yourselves, geeks.

Also: tonight at the Goldfrapp concert I saw a slightly porky guy (as in: not committed to roundness, just lumpy enough to look misshapen) in a tight red t-shirt, granny glasses, and most of his head shaved except for, like, the hair leading up to his bangs, and that hair was long and shaggy and hanging loosely off the side of his head, as though he'd filled a black pair of pantyhose with iron filings and stapled the crotch to his widow's peak. His girlfriend was just a normal roundy girl in black with cleavage and a sensible hairstyle and I felt horrible for her that her boyfriend was expressing his individuality in such a half-assedly flamboyant and stone blind fashion. Probably they have amazing sex at S&M parties and anchor their years around Burning Man and the Ren Faire. This sort of anaesthetic fuckery is the main reason San Francisco makes me want to SCREAM.

Fucking good concert, though.

Also: how big of a shit would Pac-Man have to take? The answer may surprise you. Film at 11.
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resolved [Apr. 25th, 2008|10:38 am]
My goal for the next 10 years is to become adept at a useful and ideally marketable skill that doesn't become useless when the electricity goes out.
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jailhouse rock [Apr. 22nd, 2008|06:43 pm]
I never thought about how weird these lyrics were before:
Number forty-seven said to number three:
Youre the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.
What, is this a co-ed prison? Did no one ever question this before?
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ten favorite talking heads songs [Apr. 21st, 2008|11:49 pm]
I wrote about Firefly on encyclops.com if you're interested in agreeing with me. ;)

It's easy for me to pick my ten favorite Talking Heads songs, even though I love a lot of them. In rough chronological order:

1. "Psycho Killer"
2. "Don't Worry About the Government"
3. "The Book I Read"
4. "Thank You For Sending Me an Angel"
5. "Found a Job"
6. "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls"
7. "Life During Wartime"
8. "Making Flippy Floppy"
9. "Mr. Jones"
10. "(Nothing But) Flowers"

Notably absent: "I Zimbra," "Once In a Lifetime," "Burning Down the House," and "And She Was." They're OK (except for "And She Was" -- ugh) but not my favorites.

I like Remain In Light a lot less than most critics do -- to my ears it's clunky, draggy, annoying, and tuneless. Nice rhythms, but that's it. And I like Naked a lot more than most critics do, maybe because it was my first Talking Heads album, but also because it's so evocative and full of life and weird.

My favorite single Talking Heads album is More Songs About Buildings and Food, though the live albums are great too.
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movie quote meme [Apr. 20th, 2008|02:26 am]
Stolen from [info]vdkapenguin.

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie. (or just remember them.)
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

a. "I like to keep this handy for close encounters."
Aliens, guessed by [info]orneryboy

b. "I don't mind if you don't like my manners, I don't like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings."
The Big Sleep, guessed by [info]primavera

c. "Maybe I don't want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests. "
Ghost World, guessed by [info]abiku

d. "You'd better get yourself a garlic T-shirt, buddy, or it's your funeral."
The Lost Boys, guessed by [info]orneryboy

e. "Have you ever had two people look at you, with complete lust and devotion, through the same pair of eyes?"
Being John Malkovich, guessed by [info]tfofurn

f. "Now give me the camera and unzip your pants and show me your hardware or I'm calling the police."
Pecker, guessed by [info]pjoseph

g. "I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself 'slightly' killed."
North By Northwest, guessed by [info]aimeric

h. "I've got a hardon for you the size of Florida."
The Fisher King, guessed by [info]orneryboy

i. "The note will give her shower-nozzle masturbation material for weeks."
Heathers, guessed by [info]tfofurn

j. "Forget about holding her hand, man. Think about the damage he could do to other places."
Edward Scissorhands, guessed by [info]listenstokids

k. "Details, baby, details."
The Crying Game, guessed by [info]thirdreel

l. "Mood's a thing for cattle and loveplay, not fighting!"
Dune, guessed by [info]unloveable

m. "Now put that thing back where it came from or so help me... "
Monsters, Inc., guessed by [info]listenstokids

n. "It'll be just like in the movies. Pretending to be somebody else."
Mulholland Dr., guessed by [info]abiku

o. "Well, there was the part that you missed where I distracted him with the cuddle monkey then I said "play time's over" and I hit him in the head with the peace lily."
Hot Fuzz, guessed by [info]soundofwaves
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spider kama sutra [Apr. 19th, 2008|11:16 am]
There are two kinds of people:

1. The kind who think this awesome blog post about how spiders mate is fascinating and hilariously written to boot.

2. The kind for whom just the subject line of this post made them itch all over and want to curl up into the fetal position (sorry, [info]greyanna!).
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