My sister and I headed out to LA last Friday to see Keane play the Wiltern. Or is it the Wiltern LG still? Anyway. Luckily we were able to leave and get there early enough that the parking structure nearby was still open. Usually I get there late, it's full, and I have to park somewhere more expensive or annoying, like the place Yo and I went to last time, which was valet-only and my car got a big ding in it.

So the Wiltern starts shows on time, and the opening band was already playing when we got there. They were Rocco de Lucca. I had never heard of them, but then when I went to Starbucks this week, I saw their CD for sale. They were pleasant enough, but not remarkable. I felt like the music would be nice for relaxing to, so I sat in my chair and leaned my head back. Oh yes, they have chairs in the Wiltern again - not attached, so I guess they can take them out for other events. The chairs were a nice surprise for us old folk, who didn't feel like standing for the entire show.

Unfortunately, the people in the rows in front of us really wanted to stand for some reason, so we couldn't see for the first half hour of the show. I mean, come on, it's Keane we're talking about here - they don't even play guitar (except for one song), so why do you feel the need to stand and rock out to them?

The band was actually very charismatic. I saw them at the Greek at the early stages of their fame in the U.S., and back then they were very humble and still felt a bit new to the scene. I remember how many times they thanked the audience for the support, and how the lead singer was fun, but not over-energetic. This time around, he was running all over the place, jumping around, and sweating out the songs like a pro!

They played pretty much most of the songs off their two albums, making a couple of nice changes in arrangement here and there. Overall, it was full of energy, heart, and the lighting (as is always the case at the Wiltern) was awesome. We had a fun time and even made it home by 11:30, so it wasn't too tiring! Fun times.

Kudos to Danny for his post:

The administration that worked so hard to quell debate in the run-up to the war is not about to welcome an open and full debate on the future of the war. They've apparently come up with some talking points that they're going to repeat ad nauseam in an attempt to silence their critics. I've heard them so many times over the last week that I can tell you what the administration shill is going to say even before he opens his mouth.

There's some interesting discussion going on over there, so feel free to join in.

In Washington we're now seeing the debate that should have happened in 2002. Sadly, at that time Congress was not performing its duty to oversee the people leading us into a war. Now that Congress has changed hands and there's a Presidential election looming, the debate is in full swing. The administration that worked so hard to quell debate in the run-up to the war is not about to welcome an open and full debate on the future of the war. They've apparently come up with some talking points that they're going to repeat ad nauseam in an attempt to silence their critics. I've heard them so many times over the last week that I can tell you what the administration shill is going to say even before he opens his mouth.

Lie #1: Questioning the war undermines the troops
If the troops are fighting to defend and spread democracy and freedom, then how are we undermining them when we exercise our freedoms and promote the full functioning of our democracy? As far as I know, everyone who is questioning this war and the proposed escalation is doing so because they love the troops and want them to come home. This charge should be turned around against those who would throw 20K more lives at an obviously failed policy.

Lie #2: Questioning the war emboldens the enemy
Yes, I'm sure al Qaeda just loves it when the hear that our democracy is still functioning. My personal theory is that they're smart enough to know that they can't beat the US in military conflict, but if they make us so paranoid that we voluntarily exchange our freedom for unquestioning devotion to a draconian government, then in a sense, they win. At any rate, we need to do what is right, regardless of how it makes our enemies feel. The debate is right and this argument against it is just a desperate appeal to emotion.

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam -– How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
-- Vietnam War veteran John Kerry in his 1971 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Lie #3: No one who is against the war has a plan
Although there's disagreement about details, most opponents of the escalation agree about what should be done instead: Get out. You can call it cut and run or defeat or, as seems to be the new strategy, you can pretend that this plan doesn't exist. Just this week there have been several new proposals for how to exit most gracefully. They should all be considered and debated in Congress until they have merged them together to form some sort of cohesive alternative to the Bush/McCain escalation. The President may still reject it and call it defeat, but he can't really say that there's no alternative plan. Bush claims that defeat is not an option, but sometimes you don't get to choose. Sometimes defeat happens whether you want it or not. The choice we do have is how long will we keep digging this hole? How many men and women will die in our vain attempt to salvage an ill-conceived war?

Lie #4: Talking to Iran is not worth a try
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a megalomaniac who is generally working against our interests, but that doesn't mean he can't be persuaded to play ball. Statesmen like Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton wouldn't suggest talking to Iran if they thought there was no chance that it could help. As the old saying goes, "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies." I don't get why sending 20K more troops to Iraq is "worth a try," but we can't be bothered to talk to Iran because we "don't talk to evil."

Lie #5: The Congress has no say
While the President is the Commander in Chief of the military, the Congress does have certain war powers. This New York Times article does a good job of discussing those powers. In my opinion, the current war has gone far beyond the original authorization for force. I think Congress should revoke that authorization and vote on a new authorization with more specific benchmarks, scope and deadlines.

Lie #6: Congress should skip non-binding resolutions and go straight to funding cuts
This may be the lie that I've heard most often. It's really more like a schoolyard taunt. The President's men are trying to bait the opponents of escalation into the potentially unpopular position of cutting off funding. I like the idea that we're actually seeing a debate and the resolutions will serve as a clear message to the President about where they stand. He'll still have a chance to do the right thing and heed the advice of Congress, the public, the military leaders that he's fired and most of the rest of the world. Bush would much rather have the decision taken out of his hands by a funding cut so he can have someone else to blame.

Lie #7: The news media is going to lose the war
Speaking of blame, I hate that I even have to address this lie. It's plainly false, but I've heard it so many times that I must respond to it. I'll admit that a lot of reporting is sensationalized and yes, perception does affect reality, but blaming the problems in Iraq on reporters is just stupid. Our government invaded a country without good reason and without a plan for stabilizing and rebuilding that country. The consequences of that were accurately predicted by a great deal of people. Reporters are simply doing their job when they tell us what's happening over there. Even if we somehow managed to keep the problems in Iraq a secret, they would still be happening. Ours are not the only reporters there, anyway. If the American media was under state control and didn't report anything that wasn't handed on a Presidential spoon (is that what they want?), the world would still hear about the trouble in Iraq from European and Arab reporters.

Lie #8: It's too late to discuss mistakes made before the war
There are still a number of unanswered questions about how we got into this war. It's late, but it's not too late to find out the truth and hold people responsible for it before they're out of office. Books like The Assassin's Gate and The Greatest Story Ever Sold have begun to reveal how badly this war was planned and justified. This is not some insignificant historical detail, it's the very essence of why we're in Iraq. It should have an effect on what we do in the future. I hope to see Congressional hearings on this subject.

These aren't the only lies, but they're the lies that I'm hearing the most right now. In time they may be abandoned like so many of Bush's earlier lies (Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job, I listen to my generals on the ground, etc). There's one other thing I've noticed about this. Bush's influence in the Congress has slipped to the point that he can't even get any big names to go tell these lies for him. On all the interviews and debates I've seen, the person taking up the Administration position is someone I've never heard of. With the exception of McCain, Bush is having a hard time finding anyone to support him. And McCain has to support this plan because he came up with it.

Here's to speaking truth to power and bringing our brave men and women home.

Want to understand (one explanation of) the tenth dimension and string theory? Watch a flash animation here. It will still take a while for me to get my head around it, but I feel like I have a good start now.

Bush Admin. Misled Public About Global Warming

Two private advocacy groups, meanwhile, presented to the panel a survey of government climate scientists showing that many of them say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming.

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report.

This is further proof of what we already knew. The so-called controversy about global warming is manufactured by politically and economically motivated people.

The Police to reunite on Grammys telecast - TV Squad

The big rumor from Coachella this year was that The Police were going to appear. The big reunion turned out to be Rage Against the Machine. Now it looks like The Police reunion is still happening. While they've only announced this TV appearance, rumors are still flying about a 30th anniversary tour this summer. This is definitely a reunion nobody thought would ever happen, with the near Beatles-esque feud between band mates and Sting's huge success on his own. Maybe the guys finally patched things up or maybe the price tag was finally high enough. Either way, it should be pretty cool.

Yet another Janus film, Ashes and Diamonds is connected with several names I will never know how to correctly pronounce, but they are welcome, new names in my film vocabulary, and I hope to watch more from them in the future. The movie is directed by Andrzej Wadja, stars Zbigniew Cybulski, and is probably my favorite of the older movies I've been watching lately.

The story takes place on the last day of WWII in Poland. The war is over, but the threat of future communist rule has nationalists scheming to assassinate a future district leader. The movie opens as the two assassins accidentally kill the wrong man, quite brutally. One of the mistaken soldiers is Maciek (Cybulski), who then sets himself up at the same hotel as his target and waits for the right opportunity to kill the right person. Maciek can be brutal in action, but is iconically funny and cool as well, which can be seen from the very first non-action scene. Apparently Cybulski has been compared with James Dean because of that iconic quality, and also because both actors died young while at the height of their careers. With his sunglasses and attitude, he's an instant hit, but not to be taken lightly. All too soon, he finds himself dreaming about a domestic life with the barmaid he meets at the hotel, and struggling with whether or not to start a new way of life or continue with his sense of duty.

This is known by most critics as Wadja's finest piece of filmmaking, and I can see why. Filled with several memorable images and sequences, it packs a lot of emotion into a period of 24 hours. I can't get the last 10 minutes out of my head, or the scene in the church and catacombs.

The film is said to have captured Poland's mindset at this critical time between the end of a Nazi reign and the unknown, potentially just as dangerous, future. In the scene where the band at the bar plays Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat, one can sense that the people have both a sense of relief, joy, and almost unfamiliarity with exercising pride in being Polish. That and the entire movie prompt many musings (ofteh unspoken)--mostly seen through Maciek's point of view--about the future of the country and to what extent it is one's duty is to take care of it.

Visually poetic, historically a place and time that captured my interest since I had never seen a movie about them before, and containing some wonderful performances, Ashes and Diamonds was a pleasant surprise. Loved it.

I’ve finally finished the next section of Against the Day, which is itself longer than many other novels I’ve read in the past. Not only that, but it covers a broader range of events and time span than some complete novels. For this reason, it’s very difficult for me to explain the plot of the book. Instead, I’m going to do my best in this reading journal to account for the big picture—what I see as the major themes and recurring story elements developing so far.

As I expected, the multiple stories established in the first section of the book are developed further, although the second section focuses mostly on the members of the Traverse family. At its heart it’s a Western revenge story that begins with Webb Traverse, an anarchist saboteur, who is killed by hired assassins. The story branches in several directions to follow the lives of Webb’s children, who alternately hunt down the killers and occasionally find themselves sleeping with the enemy (both figuratively and literally).

Interspersed throughout this story are chapters that minimally progress the book’s other stories: the American detective in London; the girl Dally who is reunited with the mother who abandoned her; and, as always, the Chums of Chance, the group of high-flying adventurers. Each of these stories is marked by a specific style of writing that suits its genre: the story about the Traverse family is a classic Western style; the Chums of Chance chapters read like something out of a dime novel; and the narration in the story of the American detective begins in a hard-boiled noir style, but takes on a distinctive British humor when the character travels to London.

These diverse stories are linked by occasional contact between characters as well as larger over-arching themes. I mentioned in my journal about part 1 that much of the action relates to a conflict between capitalists and anarchists. The book's second section continues to develop this theme, revealing it to be a struggle not just in America, but also England, Mexico, Europe, and perhaps throughout the industrialized world.

There is another major theme developing, which also lends the section its title: Iceland Spar. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that Iceland Spar is a particular variety of calcite known for creating a double refraction effect with light, as demonstrated in the following picture:

This effect is very similar to the lettering on the book's cover:

Beginning with the book's second section, Iceland Spar, with its refractive effects, begins turning up in characters' conversations in all the stories, often with bizarre metaphysical implications. It's a bit hard to explain, but Pynchon ties the double refraction in with the then-new ideas about light particles to suggest that Iceland Spar creates not just a double image, but a doubling of the object itself. This vague concept is used to alternately explain the appearance of a vengeful Icelandic spirit, an alchemical process for turning silver into gold, the existence of a mysterious map, and the physical duplication of human beings.

At this point I'm still not sure just where the book is going. Iceland Spar and Anarchism stand out as themes only because they are what links the various threads in the story right now. The stories themselves are driven more by their own individual plots. Over 400 pages into the book, a lot of ground has been covered, yet at the same time it feels like the central story (if there is one) is still in the background, waiting to be developed.

I know I've been posting a lot of pictures and videos of my son lately, but he just keeps doing cute stuff.

In this video he's playing a new game he made up, that involves raising an object to cover his eyes and laughing at himself.

I can't play a lot of the newer flash games out there at work because I can't upgrade the Flash player on the comptuer here. So I have to resort to some older games such as this one. It's a pretty fun break-out game, reminds me of good ol' DX Ball with all the upgrades and such.

Expired: View > Source
Tired: Web Developer Extension
Wired: Firebug 1.0

Wow, I'm actually busy at work today! I'm working on the department newsletter, and we've had a lot of changes going on in the office lately, so it's taking more than just the one-hour of work it usually takes. Ha.

The weekend was a good one! I'll have to post more about it later, but on Friday Jenny and I went to see Keane at the Wiltern, which was a fun show. It was a long day considering I worked a couple of hours of overtime as well for registration.

Saturday, my family went out to eat at Mimi's to celebrate my grandma's birthday. We bought grandma a new TV to make up for the fact that last year we bought her a DVD player and DVDs only to find that her TV was so old that it didn't have any options to connect a DVD player. Whoops! So this year, it's like she got a TV, DVD player, and several DVDs! I ate eggs at Mimis and got sick later. This is the third time I've gotten sick after eating eggs, which is making me afraid that I've developed an allergy. And I LOOOOVE eggs. All of the eggs I had each time weren't prepared at home, so I'm going to try it at home to see if maybe it was just a fluke.. three times in a row.

Saturday afternoon, I picked up Erika, who is in town visiting this week. I'm so happy to have her here - it's just like she never left when we hang out, but it's depressing to know she'll leave again on Tuesday. Since she's been missing the L.A., we went out to Amoeba Records in Hollywood, where I bought the 2006 Richard Ashcroft release that I'm listening to right now. I like it. After that we went to Hollywood and Highland to shop at Sephora for a while, where I bought a bunch of stuff with the gift card my oldest sister gave me for Christmas. Since it was rainy, we drove back to Whittier, had a great meal at Gaetano's, and went back to her parents' place to bake cookies.

Sunday I went to church, and the Andersons were there AGAIN! This week HAS to be it for sure for Liz, since her due date is the 1st. We're eagerly awaiting the news of the arrival of little Jeremy or Emily. After church, Ric and I sat around with a notary public, signing paperwork for about an hour. We refinanced the AZ home and our payment is going down a few hundred bucks a month as a result. Yay! We went out to celebrate at the Elephant Bar (thank you, Hutchinseses). Later on, I went to Erika's parents' house, where they were having all her family and friends over to see her. We all watched the wedding video footage. I hated seeing myself on video, but I'm over it. It was fun to hang out with everyone. I had enough time when I got home to clean up the bedroom, finally, putting away tons of clothes and towels. Ric did all the work this weekend, cleaning like a fiend in every other room, so I figured I'd better do SOMEthing besides the dishes. Haha. We also took our Christmas tree over to Ric's parents' house. Yes, you read that right. We just got rid of it! We have been waaaay too busy lately. At least it made Ric's car smell nice, but we sure shed a lot of needles everywhere we took it!

This week looks to have zero major plans so far, for which I am grateful.

The Brothers Chaps, the guys behind Homestar Runner and those awesome Videlectrix games, have released Wii-friendly versions of Strong Bad Zone, Secret Collect, Kid Speedy, and Population: Tire. Just point your Wii browser to this page. The page also says more games to come. Sweet.

Darwin (Norton Critical Edition) by Charles Darwin, Philip Appleman

The Day After

Emma and I have been doing some programming together using Scratch, a visual programming language created at MIT. The image above shows the code blocks that you drag and drop to create your scripts. It's very easy to get started. You can have the basics of your idea working in a matter of seconds. I think Emma is actually understanding some of the building blocks of computer programming like conditional statements, loops and variables. She's able to come up with an idea, then I tell her what code blocks to drag in and she can run the first lines of code and see the images moving around the screen. Not bad for a five-year-old. I'm probably having even more fun than she is, though. Together Emma and I made two games: Turtle Hatchling and Man Finding His Dog. Scratch is available for free for Windows and Mac. Once you've installed it you should be able to open up our games and try them.

Emma has been saying that she wants a robot. We've talked about saving up for a Robosapien 2 or saving up even longer for a Lego Mindstorms NXT. I'm more interested in the latter. I've told her that first she needs to know how to read, do some math and some programming. So she's on her way to being a robotisist.

Mike went to the CWK show at Spaceland last night. I'm jealous. The even more awesome part is he overheard Busy Philipps raving about them:

In fact, a girl behind me, while I was walking out, had the quote of the night. She was on her phone, and said in a exasperated voice, "It was so fucking good, it was even better than Timberlake!"

There you go. Better than Timberlake.

Last week I started my first online class at Cypress College, Introduction to Programming. I just finished my first two weeks worth of assignments and I can now say that I am ahead in my work. I don't get to say that often. I also finished my first C# program and it actually runs without errors. So I'm pretty proud of that. Once I actually make an interesting program, I'll share it with you guys.

Little Monkey Does His Best!

Use your mouse to control the monkey and do what monkeys do best. Get more books by hitting consecutive targets. Thanks again to Justin!

Beverly Hills, 90210 - The Complete First Season

How I Met Your Mother - Season 1

Phil, Janelle, and I auditioned for VH1's World Series of Pop Culture yesterday. Out of our group of about 20 teams, they only chose 3 to even be interviewed after the written test. We were not one of those teams. I think we all did well on the test, but the producers were only gone for about 10 minutes before they came back with their decisions, so I don't really think they looked at all the tests. They probably looked at the pictures attached to the tests, found the ones they liked, then checked their tests to make sure they knew something about pop culture. Oh well. I'm going to be productive and do my homework now. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

for the forums? There have been no new posts since sometime in late 1983. Don't get me wrong, there was some bitchen bitching going on there, but not anymore. I think the bitchen bitching has moved to the blogs.

Whaddya think?

double-wires.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Looks like Justin is back with Sleepless Nights. Thanks for the tip, man. I got 183.70 on my third try.

The God's Politics blog has a great post from Helen Prejean on the recent executions of Saddam Hussein and his aides.

I was thinking some of the same things. I think it's interesting that criticism of the executions have focused so much on the WAY the executions were carried out, maintaining the bizarre notion that putting someone to death ought to be humane and respectful.

What I see in any discussion of "dignified" execution is an attempt to distance ourselves from the unacceptable reality of what we're doing. It is barbaric to simply shoot a prisoner, so we used to hang people instead. When that started to seem brutal, we began using the electric chair, which in hindsight seems like a particularly gruesome device. We soon replaced that with a gas chamber, and then a cocktail of poisonous chemicals injected into the prisoner's veins.

Each successive method is invented with the pretense of being more humane than the last, yet each is ultimately judged as cruel and barbaric. Already people are beginning to see the barbarism of lethal injection, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it replaced soon.

I believe that as long as capital punishment is practiced in America, we're destined to continue this cycle endlessly. The problem is what Helen Prejean is getting at: we're talking about the icing and ignoring the cake. It's not the methods of killing that are barbaric--it's the act itself.

Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors; they will also smoke tobacco with pleasure.
-- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871

I'm 1/3 of the way through Darwin (Norton Critical Edition) and that's probably my favorite line so far. Growing up in the church, Charles Darwin was presented as a dark figure, a shoddy scientist who somehow duped the entire scientific community into agreeing with him. I've always been very interested in science and so after learning about evolution in school I thought about it a lot. I knew that it was heresy on some level, but it also made a lot of sense to me and it fit in with what I saw in the world. In time I did my best to compartmentalize my thoughts about science and faith. As long as I kept them separate I could enjoy the benefits of both. It's hard for me to say for sure what my opinion on this has been historically. I know that I read and probably even espoused the idea that evolution is just too unlikely to have occurred. But I've never lost my respect for science.

It has been nice to read about Darwin on my own time and with no agenda. I don't feel the need to take sides for any political or religious reason. There's no longer doubt in my mind that living things have been modified by natural selection over time and that's how the great diversity of life on earth has reached the point it's at now. There are questions that remain unanswered, but that much, at least, makes sense to me.

I'm having a slight case of blogger's block, or whatever you want to call it. I can't seem to find any cool flash games. My life is pretty boring right now and I don't want to keep writing the same things over and over in those "here is what I am doing" posts. I started watching How I Met Your Mother and it is one of my new favorite shows. It's very funny but I can also connect to it in a lot of ways. The cast is great. I love it. Other than that, nothing exciting. Maybe after this weekend that will change.

What can I say about The Rules of the Game that hasn't already been covered by countless critics? It's a wonderful movie. I don't think I can improve on any of the reviews that I've read. But in case you have never heard of it, this is a French movie by director/writer Jean Renoir that is often considered one of the best movies ever made.

Renoir himself plays a friend to Andre, who is in love with Christine, who is married to Robert, who is having an affair with Genevieve. Octave is secretly in love with Christine, and Christine's maid is being pursued (unwelcomely) by her husband the gamekeeper and (welcomely) by the newly hired Marceau. Obviously an inspiration for Gosford Park in the portrayal of the world of the rich and the world of their servants being shown within one household, the movie bounces back and forth between the two worlds effortlessly and eventually brings them together for a climactic ending.

The many social games that are included are both comical and satirical, and the movie is a perfect exercise in balancing between those and many other ideas--love and affairs, appearances and realities, rich and poor, upstairs and downstairs, living it up and a dying way of life. The movie moves quickly and seamlessly through all of these.

I can't wait to see more of Renoir's movies. This one is one I'll definitely watch multiple times because there will always be so many details to admire about it. With all of the reviews that one can find on it, there's no need for me to say anything more.

Fires on the Plain was another of the Janus/Criterions I caught off of IFC. Directed by Kon Ichikawa, it tells the story of a Japanese soldier as he wanders the island of Leyte in the Philippines. He was discharged from the hospital with tuberculosis and returned to his leader, only to be told to go back to the hospital - and if the hospital will not take him, his orders are to kill himself. Unfortunately, Tamura gets to the hospital as it's being blown up by the U.S. and decides that he'd rather move on to join other soldiers than kill himself. From there on, he faces a very bleak existence wherever he goes, alone, and desperate.

Tamura wasn't existing in a war so much as what appeared to be the aftermath of one (although I'm not familiar with the history here). He is never in a battle and it's pretty certain that the Americans have the upper hand and the Japanese soldiers are all just trying to survive without even a thought of fighting. However, the issues he battles (starvation, sickness, madness, bombings, gunfire, survival of the fittest among his own comrades) are definitely indicators that his country should have admitted defeat and pulled out the soldiers rather than forcing them into such dire circumstances. So, be it an anti-war movie or a movie that points out the errors of leaders who held up the ideals of an ongoing battle over the well-being of their men, I think it gets the point across.

If I'm being honest, the movie sounds much more interesting in writing than I think it actually turned out to be in execution. It's effective in showing us the plight of the hero, the direction is acute, and the point of view is easily seen. But it's long, and slow, and I had to watch it in installments because I fell asleep no less than four times while trying to get through it. It's not necessarily my style, but I know some people might find value in catching a glimpse of the life and times of a Japanese soldier in the Philippines in 1945 (a perspective one doesn't often see). I can recognize why it is admired by some, but felt like I was observing a person's pain without knowing anything about his personality, and without that emotional connection, it lacked enough impact for me to share that admiration.

The votes are in.I've seen way more movies this year than I did last year, but I guess not many of the ones the Academy deemed important. I'm happy for Little Miss Sunshine and Ryan Gosling. I definitely need to go see Letters from Iwo Jima and The Departed.

This is pretty awesome:

They announced the lineup for Coachella today. The first thing I noticed is that it is three days. There's a wide variety of bands. As always, there were some crazy rumors going around before the official lineup was announced. Two I heard this year that didn't happen were The Police and The Smashing Pumpkins. The big surprise this year is Rage Against the Machine, who are not actually getting back together but are only playing this one show. Somehow they convinced Zack to come out of hiding. Other acts I didn't expect to see on the bill include The Jesus and Mary Chain, Happy Mondays, and Crowded House. The three day presale tickets were $223. I think I'm retired from the festival scene. Last time was just a little too insane for me. If I had to pick though, it would be a tough choice between Day 1 & 3 but I would probably go with 1 since 3 is going to be extra insane. Regular tickets go on sale Saturday for anyone who is interested.

I guess I haven't been posting much about what I've been up to lately. It's kind of a boring thing to write about, it my eyes, but maybe if I meander, I'll think up something good.

Let's see. We're still looking around at houses to rent in the area. It's hard, though, to find the perfect combination of price, amenities, and location. We checked out one that was a few doors down from the Neals, which had an awesome craftsman-styled living room, but alas, the bedrooms were only big enough to hold our bed and nothing more! We continue to look, but not at a hurried pace.

I've been watching tons of movies lately, on tivo, Netflix, and in the theatre. I will soon be posting reviews of: Nobi (Fires on the Plain), The Rules of the Game, Ashes and Diamonds, Ballad of a Soldier, The Devil's Backbone, The Last King of Scotland, Letters From Iwo Jima, Topper Takes a Trip, and Cache (Hidden).

This year I want to make it a point to contact my friends and see them more often. Last week Ric and I were able to meet up with Judi while she was in town on Tuesday. I hung out with Wendy to watch tv on Wednesday, Friday we had dinner with the Hutchinseses, and on Saturday I made my sister help me make cupcakes for a baby shower and then went out to a nice Italian dinner and a movie. Sunday we had lunch with the Andersons, as usual, and we're thinking Liz might actually give birth this week, since the baby is measuring quite large and the doctor has advised that she get walking to try and start labor. Tomorrow we're having dinner with the Keddys, which should be a lot of fun! Many of you are on my hitlist for hanging out, so hang in there if I'm slow to get back to you. This week I've got Erika in town, Registration, a concert, and my Grandma's birthday. I feel like time is filling up way faster than it should for a January!

Ruth is going to start training for a triathlon with a friend of hers, so my workout routine is going to change yet again! I'll be alone a lot more, which means I'll need to have more willpower not to find an excuse to skip workout. Thankfully, though, a couple of girls from work are starting to work out more! Abby's been given the green light to work out more now that her back has healed, and Amy's inspired to get into better shape too. I'll be happy to have their company. And it's encouraging to see Cyndi out there on the track too! I'm trying to step everything up a notch lately. Right now I do a variety of elliptical machine, walking, jogging, weight machines, free weights, push-ups, and crunches.

The back stuff continues. It's mostly been good lately, but unfortunately, I had a weird "pop" when I leaned forward Friday morning, and have been in more pain since then. I'll check it out at the chiropractor tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm still supposed to be doing my two back chores - hanging on the inversion traction table, and using the pressure pump to reshape the curvature of my neck.

Family updates - things are pretty normal. My dad's health is okay for now, but he eats badly and I think he tests God's patience by doing that, since he's already had a couple of heart attacks and a quintuple bypass in the past. My mom is hanging in there with him, and her latest thing is all about watching What Not To Wear and trying to put into practice some of the things she learns from it. My oldest sister is living in northern California and is busy working and taking care of her youngest kid while the oldest three are branching out into college, and her husband is currently unemployed, so that's a challenge. My brother is, I think, in Bakersfield, and honestly I don't know much about his life because he doesn't stay very connected with any of us. My other sister (full sister) is still working as a nanny and loves the family she's working for. She had a scare a few weeks ago when one of the twins completely flattened his finger, but luckily, he's doing well and the finger is saved. Her boyfriend still works in Japan and they're still calling each other a lot and visiting when they can. The in-laws are all great as well - not much to report there, as things are pretty routine lately!

Ric is doing all right, but is being stretched pretty thin by his job lately. They're installing a new baler at the plant, and it's a lot of coordinating to handle. Ric is stuck as the middle-man communicator a lot of the time, and ends up getting blamed for a lot of people's mistakes. The job itself is a challenge, but I think the people he works with make it ten times more challenging, not to mention the lack of structure in the company. I'm ever grateful for my job and my department, which are the complete opposite of what he deals with on a daily basis. At least, unlike the Hutchinseses, we have similar schedules and are able to hang out a lot with each other. We're all caught up watching the Office seasons 1-3, have been going to coffee with each other, eating out together, and also enjoying just vegging at home when we actually have the chance to do it.

Meanwhile, I miss a lot of you and would love to hear updates from those of you without blogs (or who seem to have stopped using them). Send us an email or update the old blogs! ..Okay, back to the movie reviews..

Notes on a Scandal, while good, was a bit of a disappointment for me. The movie features Judi Dench as "the mean teacher" of a school, who also happens to be a bit crazy and picks out friendships with women and obsesses about them. Cate Blanchett's character, Sheba, is Dench's Barbara's victim in this story. Sheba is a bohemian soul with a conventional family life, and so when she finds herself in trouble, Barbara offers her assistance, but only at the price of blackmail.

Honestly, the story could have gone much deeper into Barbara's obsession and been a much more effective movie. It wasn't very frightening, wasn't overly tense, and Barbara turned out to be a tad mild compared to other obsessors (is that a word?) we've seen in other movies (Glenn Close, Kathy Bates). The psychological focus on each character is very simplistic as well. Sheba is young and lonely, thus vulnerable, and Barbara is old and lonely, thus desperate enough to prey on Sheba.

Still, the movie isn't terrible. The acting is great - how can it not be with Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Bill Nighy involved? Philip Glass provides the score, which does what it's supposed to - adds tension that otherwise might not be felt from just the script alone. The interaction with Sheba's family is enjoyable, and the integration of Siouxsie and the Banshees in any movie is always a plus.

While it was good enough, I left the theater feeling underwhelmed, and haven't even thought about the movie until just now, so if you're debating on whether or not to see it or one of the other talked about movies, I'd say to see the other movie. Wait to see it for a dollar or on tv. But if you're like me and make it a point to see whatever gets nominated, it will be an okay way to pass a couple of hours.

Just now I was finishing my nightly reading of Against the Day when I came to this sentence:

Back in 1899, not long after the cyclone that year which devastated the town, young Willis Turnstone, freshly credentialed from the American School of Osteopathy, had set out westward from Kirksville Missouri, with a small grip holding a change of personal linen, an extra shirt, a note of encouragement from Dr. A. T. Still, and an antiquated Colt's in whose use he was far from practiced, arriving at length in Colorado, where one day, riding across the Uncompahgre Plateau, he was set upon by a small band of pistoleros.

As an actual resident of Kirksville, MO I was excited to see my town mentioned by a world-renowned novelist, especially considering that my town is populated by fewer than 17,000 other people. Once I got over my shock, I noticed the first line again: "Back in 1899, not long after the cyclone that year which devastated the town..." Yes, this refers to The Kirksville Cyclone, a little bit of local history we teach our high school freshmen in Civics class.

This has given me a new level of appreciation for the kind of work Thomas Pynchon put into writing his latest novel. The character being discussed here, Willis Turnstone, is an extremely minor character, appearing for no more than five pages (unless he appears again later, which I doubt). Pynchon actually went to the trouble of researching the history of Kirksville to find an obscure historical detail for inclusion in what is ultimately an inconsequential back story of a minor character in an enormous book.

It's no wonder this is his first novel in nine years.

Update: I've just found out that this is the passage that Penguin Press used as an excerpt for their winter 2007 catalog. How wild!

This just happened and I had to share it. This sweet little old couple just drove up to the gate to visit their son. I aksed for the name of their son and the man said Greg (some name I didn't understand that started with a B). I asked him how to spell the name and he looked at me and said "G-R-E-G" very matter of factly. That made my day.

I tried creating a family tree on the computer once, but I gave it up for two reasons. First, I only know so much, so there were lots of holes in the tree, and second, there wasn't an easy way for me to show it off to other people in the family. Geni.com fixes both of those issues. It's an online collaborative family tree. You can start out in about 2 minutes and quickly add your closest relatives. If enter a family member's email address when you add them, they'll be sent an invite to log in and work on the tree, too. Then they can add people and invite them to help. You can add all kinds of information for each person, including a photo that shows up in the main tree view.

In addition to solving my problems, this site is very easy to use. The interface may remind you of Google Maps. You can drag the tree around and zoom in and out. You can select any person in the tree and make them the center of attention so that it shows the people that are most relevant to them and hides the inlaws. This is all done gracefully and without requiring any input from you. It's very well done. Did I mention that it was free?

If you're related to me, even distantly, don't create your own account, contact me and I'll make sure you're in my tree, then I'll add you. Otherwise, I recommend trying this out. You can have your immediately family added and invited about 3 minutes after starting.

Thanks to Matt for telling me about this.

I can't find a good pic for this one, sorry. I saw Zhang Yimou's (Hero, Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers) Curse of the Golden Flower with Jon and Grace last night. I thought it was pretty great. The sets and costumes are pretty unbelievable and the sheer number of extras is amazing. The film just looked beautiful. It was very Shakespearean, as Grace pointed out, and was pretty darn depressing. But even if that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, I think you should go see it. Why? Ninjas. Lots of freaking ninjas flipping out on people. Aside from the tragic themes, I think the lesson learned in this movie is that no matter how well you think you are doing in a fight or how many people you killed, some ninjas are always going to flip out and kill you. Also, Chow Yung Fat is fan-freaking-tastic and plays very against type in this film. But to summarize my review, even if the whole rest of the movie sucked (which it doesn't), Ninjas = Awesome so Curse of the Golden Flower = Awesome.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/sendmessage/

"Please stop this. I beg of you."

World Of Warcraft Burning Crusade Collector's Edition

Here's another de-motivational poster I made. Again, Neatorama supplied the picture but the poster is courtesy me and this generator.

(Click to embiggen)

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan

My apologies for the silence. It's been a fun and somewhat hectic weekend. Thursday I went to Disneyland with some friends. It was good going back to the park and just enjoying it. Yesterday I played some Burning Crusade and then Phil and I drove up to L.A. for the Cold War Kids show. The person in front of me bought the last walk-up ticket. But we accomplished our main mission of seeing our friend Matt, the bass player. It was great talking to him. We also saw two of our old friends from Biola that we haven't seen in ages, so that was cool. In order to make our visit up to L.A. a little more worthwhile, we spent a few hours at Amoeba plowing through the clearance bins. I found a few good CDs and I always just love browsing that place. So it was a great night.

I took today off work since I had my orientation class for Introduction to Programming. Before I went to class I had breakfast with Matt, Phil, and Janelle and then I headed over to campus. I forgot that on weekends they do a swap meet there so it was a pain to find parking. The class went well and I think I will do fine. We're spending the first half of the semester learning C#, which doesn't look too bad. Tonight Phil and I might go see a band that wants to do a show with The BrendoMan All-Stars, so that should be cool. Hope all you readers out there have a good weekend too!

Captain Braidy

Guide your freaky looking clown to the bumpers and balloons to get him to go higher and score more points.

Plain View #60 - January 19, 2007

Sorry, we recorded this one with the furnace blowing the whole time.

Top movie of 2007

Little Miss Sunshine (what Card has to say)

Books, too close to call

Weather - ice

Tet supplies

Games

T.V.

Kid Quotes

Bonus: Mare's Top 10 Games

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