I promise!!

It's that time again, so let's see what the ol' iPod has in store for us today.

1. The 77's - Don't Say Goodbye
2. Supergrass - Tour Love
3. Mortal - Word is Alive (Jeromix)
4. Bjork - Human Behavior
5. They Might Be Giants - The Bells Are Ringing
6. Nada Surf - Are You Lightning?
7. Feist - Past In Present
8. The Velvet Underground - All Tomorrow's Parties
9. R.E.M. - Drive
10. Weezer - Good Life

I would say this is a good morning mix, a nice combination of new and old. Nice job iPod.

I feel sorry for the babies born today. You only really get to celebrate your birthday once every four years. Three out of four of your birthdays are a lie. I wonder if there are folks out there that don't recognize leap year. It's probably still 2007 for them. If you went to this non-science listening country, it would be like time travel. That would be pretty neat.

I just got invitations to two 10 year high school reunions. I went to a private school for two years and a public school for my last two years. My class at the private school was really small and tight knit so they invited me even though I left after sophomore year. Since trips to San Diego are something I'll never say no to, I'll be going to both. The first is in September. I'm finding it hard to believe that ten years has passed. Part of me says I haven't done enough, but then when I really think about it, I've done quite a bit. It's been a long, strange trip. At least I'll have some crazy stories to tell. Now that I think about it, that picture is actually 11 years old since I took it the summer before my senior year. Dang...

I found this blog through Honzo. It's full of vicious satire that makes me feel small and shallow. Here are a few posts that were especially hard to take:

#18 Awareness

An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through "awareness." Meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.

#25 David Sedaris

White people universally love David Sedaris. So if they ever ask you “who are you favorite authors?” you should always reply “David Sedaris.” They will instantly launch into a story about how much they love his work, and the conversation will go from there, and you don’t have to talk about books any more.

#28 Not Having A TV

The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don’t have a TV.

#41 Indie Music

They are always on the look out for the latest hot band that no one has heard of so that one day, they can hit it just right and be into a band BEFORE they are featured in an Apple commercial. To a white person, being a fan of a band before they get popular is one of the most important things they can do with their life. They can hold it over their friends forever!

#44 Public Radio

White people love stations like NPR (which is equivalent to listening to cardboard), and they love shows like This American Life and Democracy Now. This confuses immigrants from the third world. The see the need for radio as a source for sports, top 40 radio and traffic reports but they don’t quite understand why people who can afford TVs and have access to Youtube, would spend hours listening to the opinions of overeducated arts majors.

#64 Recycling

Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

#75 Threatening to Move to Canada

Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs are so strong, that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly similar to the one they live in now.

Ouch.

I got this from Jeri and it freaked me out pretty bad.

Imagine this. It’s Sunday night and you’re sitting in a movie theater watching The Signal, an independent horror movie about a mysterious transmission which invades every cell phone, radio and TV, turning people into killers. And then suddenly, two men sitting in separate areas of the theater are randomly attacked and stabbed by an unknown man who was watching the movie. This isn’t just a scenario, this actually happened last night at the AMC Theater in Fullerton. Is The Signal real?

I go to this theater rather often. It's gotten progressively shadier since I was in college. The fact that they haven't caught the guy is kind of nuts too. So there's a psycho loose in the area. Hopefully they'll catch him soon. I honestly don't think this has anything to do with the movie itself, but it's pretty weird since it's so close to my home.

One common argument for the existence of God is the moral argument, which says that the best explanation for humanity's shared sense of right and wrong is a god who sets an objective standard. I've discussed with the Morality Argument before, but I'd like to bring up one particular question that comes up for people who subscribe to this argument: The Euthyphro dilemma:

ἆρα τὸ ὅσιον ὅτι ὅσιόν ἐστιν φιλεῖται ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν, ἢ ὅτι φιλεῖται ὅσιόν ἐστιν

Which translates to "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" When dealing with Christianity, the dilemma can be phrased like this: "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"

If God commands things because they're moral, then that means there is some standard of morality above and outside of God and he's only passing it on to us.

If something is moral only because he commands it, then morality is arbitrary. If God wanted to declare that genocide is allowed, then it would no longer be evil. If God is the very definition of good, then saying "God is good" is meaningless. You might as well say that that the book 1984 is Orwellian.

The standard Christian response to the dilemma is to say that goodness flows from God and is one with his very nature. I don't think that really avoids the problems of the dilemma, but I'm not bringing this up in order to settle the issue. I only want to point out that there is a dilemma. It doesn't disprove the existence of God, but it does show that the Moral Argument is not without its problems. I think that there are better explanations for our shared morality than god that are simpler, fit better with the facts and raise fewer questions.

Note: I encountered the Euthyphro Dilemma while reading a review of Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig. The review was written by Chris Hallquist and I recommend it. And yes, this is all a thinly veiled excuse to add Greek to a post.

So nice

Originally uploaded by brendoman

Here is my photo set of my unboxing pictures for those curious. Look at how small that baby is. I'm really digging it so far.

Sara and I went to the AMC Best Picture Showcase on Saturday. It ran from 11 am to 11 pm, with about a 20 minute break between each film. The $30 ticket included all 5 movies and unlimited popcorn.

12 hours is a long time to be in a theater, but it's still nothing compared to the 24-hour Butt-Numb-a-Thon that Brendan went to in 2003. There were over 400 of us in the theater and it did start to smell by the end of the day.

Sara watched Juno with some friends in December, but other than that, we had not seen any of the movies. I thought they were all good films.

Juno was my favorite, though I wasn't surprised that it didn't win. Daniel Day-Lewis deserved the Best Actor Oscar and Diablo Coty did write the best original script.

HowToTalkGood.com is a site dedicated to exposing and improving business communication. It's produced by my brother, Mike. Mike is a professional writer and he uses knowledge, sarcasm and pitiless scorn to point out the stupid ways that some business people are using the English language.

I don't remember my Friday night all that well. I know Ric and I took it easy and skipped painting for once!

On Saturday, we joined the Hutchinseses for an afternoon with the Kings. We totally thought we were going to lose when it was 5-1 in favor of the Blackhawks, but then in the last period, we tied it up, the final goal being 13 seconds before the period ended. We were all amazed and excited. Unfortunately, we lost in overtime. It was a very fun afternoon. When we got back, I worked on more unpacking for a couple of hours. That evening, Ric and I went to Ric's parents' place to continue painting kitchen cabinet doors. I spent the rest of the night working on that stuff.

Sunday, we went to church with Liz. I got some sudden sharp pains in my stomach, so I spent the morning and afternoon in bed. I watched the Mythbusters MacGuyver episode, which was awesome. That evening I felt better, so I went with Ric back to his parents' place for pizza, Oscars, and painting. We ended the night by watching In the Shadow of the Moon, which I definitely recommend.

Up this week: more paint, of course! We've also got several movie activities planned with friends. Work is super busy. Today I was incredibly productive... right until the server went down. It's bad, and they think that everything we did today will have to be lost, which means all of my productivity was a total waste! I could have been playing Scramble!

The Onion News Network: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

You, the readers, once again successfully chose the Best Picture winner correctly. Nice job. I thought the Oscars were all right, no big surprises except I think Transformers got robbed on the effects and sound awards, especially poor Kevin O' Connell who has now been nominated 20 times without a win. My favorite moment was probably the performance of "Falling Slowly" and its subsequent win. Nice job, guys. Kudos to the Academy for letting Marketa Irglova come back up to deliver her speech after she got cut off.

I'm having trouble coming up with new poll ideas so feel free to submit yours in the comments or through email if you want it to be top secret. In the meantime, feel free to choose whether you like Hilary or Obama.

I mentioned Micah P. Hinson once briefly after discovering a single song by him on a podcast. Since then I've bought his two solo albums and I'm happy to say that all of his music is excellent. Have a listen.

Diggin a Grave on 103.1 FM

She Don't Own Me on BBC Collective:

It's hard to believe this guy is younger than I am. The first time I heard him I thought he sounded like an old, weathered country/folk singer.

And just because this song is so brilliant, check out the studio recording of She Don't Own Me.

Setting up Visual Studio

I had a big gadget week. In addition to my new EEE PC I also got a free upgrade to a Blackberry 8310. It has a pretty decent camera complete with a flash. This is the first picture I took with it. I installed my free copy of Visual Studio 2008 that I got from the Microsoft DreamSpark program for students. This will be a big help with school and other projects.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

No Country for Old Men

Atonement

There Will Be Blood

Michael Clayton

So we're pregnant again. Just finishing week 18, actually, which means we're getting close to halfway done. July 29 is the due date, although Stephanie thinks the true due date should be July 28, since the doctor's highly sophisticated "spinny wheel" probably was not programmed to account for an extra day in February as this is a leap year. Let's just hope there's nothing else the doctor has to account for in a leap year.

You may be asking, If you've known since Thanksgiving that you were pregnant, why are you only posting about it now?

Well, first of all, how did you know that we found out at Thanksgiving? Ahhhh... HA!

Secondly, it's because we had a miscarriage last time. I don't know exactly why this made me reluctant to post, but it did. I think maybe I stayed a bit distant from the whole thing for a little while. Then, all of the sudden, we were at week 12 and heading toward the time when we had the miscarriage last time (beginning of week 14). Those two weeks were very long. Steph knew the point at which we had the miscarriage last time to the day, and it fell on a Sunday/Monday again. Going to bed that Sunday night was like putting down a really intense book just as you get to the climactic moment. The sun sets, and the sun also rises, and things move on. It felt like we had passed one of those makeshift memorials you see along the highway with the leaning cross and the sun-faded silk flowers. I don't know if this will make sense, but it wasn't until then that I began to think of this as a new baby, different from the last.

So the task now is to learn to hope again. Steph has been saying, and I've only recently begun to understand it, that our hope is for a baby, but our hope is in God. Even then, hope is a risk, not the last resort of the desperate as I used to think.

Whenever I've watched the Oscars in the past I've been very interested in the short film categories, even though I'm not at all familiar with them. Perhaps it's the fact that they are so unknown that makes that section of the awards unpredictable and exciting.

This year, with the help of YouTube, I've decided to familiarize myself with the short animated films so I can have some idea about what ought to win. I thought some of you might be interested in doing the same. Here are all five nominees for Best Animated Short:

I Met the Walrus
The full film is unfortunately not on YouTube, but you can see a preview here. It looks pretty cool.

Madame Tutli-Putli
This strange little film about a woman on a train is frightening and beautiful.
Part 1
Part 2

Even Pigeons Go To Heaven
A very cute French film about a miserly man buying passage to Heaven. Watch it here.

My Love
I don't really care for the romantic story or the paint-on-glass visual style, but some of the dream sequences are interesting.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Peter and the Wolf
Yes, it's another interpretation of the classic musical composition. It's mostly well-done, and the creators even tried adding new dimensions to the story, including a pacifist ending, but ultimately I found little in it to set it apart from the many incarnations that have come before.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

My pick: Madame Tutli-Putli

Plain View #81 - February, 2008

Bufe

Extreme Horton Makeover

Maly sick

Tet postponed

Music's gotta go (?)

Politics - blah blah blah

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Sophie's Choice (7 minutes cut for your protection)

Water Horse

New music test run

The missing podcast

VV (my favorite Ukrainian rock band)

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Street View in Google Maps now includes Kansas City.

Circle Calculator Thingy

It's not much, but it took me too freaking long to figure out. I feel slightly accomplished.

I stumbled upon this today and thought it was appropriate since Portal was just voted Game of the Year at the Game Developer's Conference. I think it deserved it.

One of the best documentaries I've seen in a long time, My Architect follows a son who is trying to understand who his father was. Nathaniel Kahn is the son of Louis Kan, an important architect who died in the 1970s. Nathaniel didn't spend a huge amount of time with his father, because his father was either traveling for his work or living with one of his other two families. Yes, his father seemed to have many relationships with women - not necessarily as a womanizer, but as a man who seemed to think loving a few different women was normal for his life. And it's not that Louis Kahn was an extremely attractive man; he had a scarred face from an accident in his childhood. He just attracted people to himself.

That's what's interesting about My Architect. While visiting the many buildings that his father designed, as well as interviewing the people who worked with him or loved him, Nathaniel learns that people seemed to be instinctively attracted to Louis Kahn's greatness. People knew that what he did was important. Though he died penniless, the people who knew him knew at the time that what he was working on wasn't just a bunch of buildings - they were masterpieces. As one fellow architect commented, he himself had built many buildings, but not masterpieces, and Louis Kahn had built a small amount, but left behind several masterpieces as his legend.

I found it really interesting to hear people's perspectives of Kahn. It's as if everyone forgave him for his unconventional lifestyle and work ethics, because they accepted that a genius doesn't live a normal life. They didn't expect him to live like everybody else. And, when you hear people describe his work, it's almost easy to agree with them. The conversations with various people touch on many different insights about architecture and art and what it does for the people who experience it. The trip to India, specifically, is where Nathaniel is best able to comprehend his father as an artist.

The is sometimes very emotional as well, especially when it comes to Nathaniel's exploration of his father as a lover and a parent. His mother claims that Louis was on the way to come and live with their family permanently when he died of a heart attack in a train station. Nathaniel interviews the women of Louis Kahn's life, and even their children, to try and discover if that was just his mother's wishful thinking, or if there might have been truth to it. I love the scene where the architect's various children discuss his funeral. They remember each other from the ceremony, including how Nathaniel and his mother were not acknowledged as family that day. While the past seems to have been filled with mixed families and emotions, there seems to be an element of acceptance that pervades all of the conversation, and to me, it seems to be that the acceptance stems from everyone's understanding of Kahn as a great artist.

This is definitely a movie I would watch again, because it's not just a documentary about a man's life - it's an exploration of the nature of art and its creators, and how we react to great pieces of art. With perfect balances of interviews, locations, photos, video, and the art itself, My Architect is not just an interesting documentary, but one extremely well-made.

I just read that David Fincher intends to direct the Neil Gaiman-penned screen adaptation of Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole.

Take a moment to wrap your head around all that.

I splurged a bit and got the EEE with a webcam. It also has longer battery life. This means I can do video chatting in Skype. The keyboard is taking some getting used to but I think eventually I'll get the hang of it.

I have been saving up money for a trip to Scotland but plans fell through for the moment so I got myself a shiny new EEE 4G Surf. Thanks to NewEgg being so close it got here in a day. I also picked up a 1 GB stick of RAM to replace the 512 MB that is included. Memory sure has gotten cheap. I took a bunch of pictures but oddly enough the memory card reader I ordered was shipped from Jersey so it isn't here yet. So pics are coming soon. I really dig it so far.

I've so far avoided any anti-Clinton posts, but I couldn't resist this. Her campaign has accused Obama of plagiarism, but then she tried to copy Obama's "Yes we can" chant, changing one word. Her supporters didn't seem to take the cue, though:

And I can't help but mention that Clinton failed to give credit to the ghostwriter who helped her with It Takes a Village.

(via Digg)

Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress

Hi all,

I'm sorry my posts are a lot fewer lately. The move has me working full time when I'm not working full time at work. And work is very busy as well. I'll just do a run-down of what we've been up to.

Thursday was Valentine's Day. Ric and I met up after work, drove to Downtown Disney, and had a quick meal from the Jazz Kitchen To Go shop. So far I prefer their gumbo and jambalaya to their red beans and rice. We then walked into the park with only 30 minutes until closing, so we found our way around the parade going on (I had never seen it and if I were a kid, I think I would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world) and were the last people to make it onto the Haunted Mansion. After that, we went to Build-A-Bear to buy Pip a new outfit for his 2nd birthday. Yes, we're that mean. We then picked up some frostees at Wendy's and joined Ric's parents to watch Lost (our cable hadn't been hooked up yet). Honestly, it was nice to keep everything low key and just veg, since we've been working so hard lately.

Friday I can't remember what we did, but I'm guessing it involved paint. Woo. Later that night we were going to go to the cheap theater, but got sidetracked when we saw the Grand Cafe, and decided chicken kabobs, coffee, and hookah sounded like just what we needed. It was.

Saturday, I got up early and started out with the final touches of trim in the office. Thank goodness that's done, except I need to do some touch-up. Then the cable guys came. We realized that what we thought were cable hookups in our place were actually satellite hookups. So they had to fix it all for us. Amy came over while I was sanding the framework of our kitchen cabinets. She rocked out our bathroom with a second layer of paint while I continued sanding. After that, she helped me tape up the doors around the cabinet under our stairs. I spent pretty much the rest of the day painting inside the closet. That night, we met up with my sister at the cheap theater and saw Enchanted. Review to come (at this rate, in a few weeks!).

Sunday we got up early and went to church with Liz. We got our deposit and a whopping $30 gift card from our landlord at the old place to make up for all the crap he put us through, so we took Liz and Emily out to breakfast after church. From there it was sanding cabinet doors and drawers at Ric's parents' place, showing off the new mess to Liz and Emily, and several more hours inside the stairs closet with a second layer of paint. When I close my eyes, I swear all I see is white paint.

Yesterday we painted primer on the cabinet doors and drawers in Ric's parents' backyard while listening to the Kings game. If ever there was a Kings game that it was okay to miss, that was it. Tonight and all week: more of the same, since the cabinet doors will need several layers on both sides.

And that, my friends, is the exciting life of homeownership! I can't wait until we get settled in (which should be another month or two, with all the painting we have to do) so that we can actually enjoy the new place.

Daniel's latest thing is spinning around in circles until he gets dizzy and falls down.

Sometimes I wonder: what did Erika and I do for entertainment before we were parents?

Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Perez

The Orange Box

Gone Baby Gone

Official: HD DVD dead and buried, format war is over - Engadget

I've probably said it before, but I'll say it again: The format war doesn't matter. Apparently Toshiba realizes this as well as they've decided to focus on HD video content for the internet instead of making their own Blu-Ray players. Yes, Blu-Ray looks awesome and will probably do very well. However, you have to realize that the bulk of America is just now being weaned off of VHS. By the time they're ready for another media format, media formats will be pretty much obsolete. The real wave of the future is online video and video on demand. I think Blu-Ray will be a more successful version of the Laser Disc. It's a quality format for videophiles and the like, but not something the bulk of consumers will really embrace. For me personally, I would love to have an HDTV and a Blu-Ray player but that is just a crazy amount of money to spend. Yes, costs will definitely go down, but I'm happy with what I have right now. I think a lot of folks feel the same way.

Thank you Mr. Washington and Mr. Lincoln for being born and giving me the day off. Hope you guys are having a good weekend. I have done pretty much nothing and it has been wonderful. I've been playing a lot of Portal which I love. I've been pretty much ignoring the internets this weekend so I have nothing else to report. Feel free to comment with your exciting news bits.

I finally got to see the Coen Brothers' latest offering last night. I had given up hope of catching it in the theater, but the Academy Award nominations popularized the film enough that it actually came to our little theater in Kirksville.

I've obviously been very anxious to see No Country For Old Men: Joel and Ethan Coen are my favorite filmmakers of all time, and for a graduate English class I even wrote a paper analyzing the depiction of American landscapes in their movies. As soon as I learned the premise of their newest offering I knew it would fit perfectly with the thesis I once spent a semester developing.

After finally getting to see movie, however, I had mixed feelings. Sure, it's a magnificent artistic achievement: brilliantly acted, directed, shot, and edited, No Country For Old Men certainly deserved all of the praise it's been given. The only things missing from it are those things that made me love the Coen Brothers: their snappy dialogue, their post-modern manipulation of film genre, and the element of the surreal or supernatural in their movies.

The movie in the Coens' body of work that No Country For Old Men most resembles is their debut, Blood Simple, which also featured a protagonist being pursued by a relentless killer in the midst of a barren Texas landscape. It similarly lacks the humorous dialogue of the Coens' other films, although if you look closely you can see the brothers begin to play a little with the film medium. In one scene the camera moves down the length of a bar and must move up and over a drunk man passed out across its path. The photographer of Blood Simple warned the Coen Brothers against this shot, saying it would draw the audience's attention to the existence of the camera. The Coens replied that this was the exact effect they desired.

Even such subtle playfulness with audience awareness is absent from No Country For Old Men. Many critics have claimed it is their best work because of this fact, but that playfulness is what made me love the Coen Brothers in the first place. With their three most recent films adapted from other people's stories, I would like to see them direct an original script more in the style on which they built their reputation.

Nevertheless, it's unfair to judge a movie against what I would like it to be, so I must acknowledge that in every way No Country For Old Men is an unqualified artistic success. The scene between Carla and Chigurh alone is worth the price of admission, and features the most inspired line I've heard spoken in a movie theater in a long time: "The coin has nothing to do with it. It's just you."

Post-script: After writing this I checked the Coen Brothers' filmography at Wikipedia, where I saw that one upcoming project is an adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union. While I would love to see this, I still maintain my preference for original Coen Brothers stories (which we will apparently get in Burn After Reading).

Nude by Radiohead:

Sorry. I love the song, along with pretty much anything Radiohead does, but I couldn't bring myself to sit through this entire video.

If you want to see Radiohead moving in slow motion, I recommend watching the infinitely better Street Spirit video, directed by Jonathan Glazer:

LEGO.com Indiana Jones Games

It's been awhile since I've gotten to post a Flash game since most of them are blocked at work. This is a really fun but tricky game that promotes the new Indiana Jones line of Legos as well as the upcoming game. Instead of controlling Indy you have to click on obstacles as well as gather treasure with your mouse. Timing is crucial.

It's been awhile since I've done this but Kyle did it and I have to copy everything he does.

1. Sia - Sunday
2. Remy Zero - Save Me
3. Annie Lennox - The Saddest Song I've Got
4. Devo - What I Must Do
5. Mary Beth Maziarz - Daydream Believer
6. Okkervil River - Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe (Demo)
7. Ryan Adams - Twenty Nine
8. Beastie Boys - 3 The Hard Way
9. The Smashing Pumpkins - Age of Innocence
10. Fluffy - My Lord, What a Morning

Now that's a pretty random Random Ten.

Yes, he wants everyone to take the time to hug your chothers. I wasn't sure what this meant at first either. But then he showed my wife and me a couple of his toys, whose arms were wrapped around each other. "They're hugging their chuthers," he informed us. Aha. We tried to correct him. "No, you mean that they are hugging each other." But he continues to talk about how he likes to hug our chuthers, and he and his sister hug their chuthers, and we should hug his chuthers.

A good reminder with all of the insanity in the world. Go hug your chuthers.

Yes, this poll is similar to the previous poll but it's a tradition and I'd like to stick with it. You guys voted No Country For Old Men as the best movie of 2007, which won with a commanding lead over Superbad and Juno. Now it's time to make your Best Picture pick. I'm still torn on my choice but maybe the nominee marathon on the 23rd will help me finalize my decision.

Yesterday around 3:30, I heard on the radio that police activity was reported at Northern Illinois University. NIU's website reported a possible gunman. At 3:55, I saw the update online that a shooting was confirmed. As an NIU graduate, the confirmation floored me even moreso than the other school shootings. I called my wife to see if anyone we know goes there, and then e-mailed one of my old professors. He responded soon after, letting me know he and his wife, also a professor, were safely at home. He was teaching in the next building when it happened.

The count is up to 6 dead, including the man who attacked the university. Everyday something in the news makes me ask "What is wrong with us?"

This tragedy hits close to home because I am a graduate of the university, and because we live only 20 or so miles from the main campus. I walked past that building nearly every day for 4 years. Seeing the doors and windows shot out, footage of students and police, hearing the accounts on the radio, the reality that I personally know some people who lived through this...it is too much for me to comprehend and to find any words to articulate how it is affecting me.

After Columbine, I would just start crying thinking about those kids...KIDS!...who had to dive over tables, around doorways, to avoid a bullet. When I saw Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," I couldn't sleep, and I kept replaying in my head the video from inside the school on that horrific day. I had never seen it until that film, and I found it profoundly disturbing.

I feel the same way now. I think about the young people in that classroom, and I cannot believe that they had to make the choice to jump, dive, crawl, whatever it took to get away from someone who wanted to destroy lives. I cannot believe that 6 of them are dead.

Christopher O'Riley - Karma Police
Daniel Johnston - Walking the Cow
Ben Folds Five - Brick
U2 - A Sort of Homecoming
Ani DiFranco - Napoleon
The Flaming Lips - Okay I'll Admit That I Really Don't Understand
Brian Setzer Orchestra - Let's Live It Up
Sufjan Stevens - Dumb I Sound
UNKLE - The Knock (Drums of Death, Pt. 2)
David Bowie - Battle For Britain (The Letter)

El Rushbo's Appeal to Steve Jobs

You know, I'm a big Mac guy. I love Macs, and I've got four Mac Pros. They're the top-of-the-line Mac Pros, maxed out. And they just had a new system upgrade, went to 10.5 Leopard, and they've had two upgrades since October. Yesterday brought 10.5.2, which was loaded. It was a big, big update. I've been having two problems since I went to Leopard that I hoped this update would solve, and it didn't solve them; and it's frustrating. I'm telling these guys. I've worked patiently. I've been very patient with my Apple rep, with my developer rep, and they're working hard on it, but nothing gets done!

I know, I know. I'm sure there's plenty of unsavory folks who use PC's as well, but for some reason this reminded me of the episode of Saved By the Bell where Mr. Belding wears a Buddy Band and everyone returns theirs. Yeah, I'm a dork like that.

INDIANA JONES on Yahoo! Movies

It's as wonderful as I imagined. I don't care how old Harrison Ford is, he looks great. Blanchett looks like she's going to make a good villain. Of course, like I've said before, this could be called Indiana Jones and the Trip to the Grocery Store and I would be there opening day.

Another video from The Animation Show (although there's no animation in it, so I'm not sure why it was posted at that site):

I know, I know. You wouldn't peg me for the type to rent this movie, but there was an old Gilda Radner sketch (left photo) where she plays Lisa Loopner, a girl obsessed with The Way We Were, who tries to get through a performance of "Memories", but ends up spending most of the time telling the audience about how much she loves the movie. I loved that sketch, so I decided to watch the movie when I had a chance. Bad decision.

The movie follows the relationship of Katie and Hubbell. They had nothing in common in college, but when reunited years later, they unintelligently form a relationship together despite the fact that they still have nothing in common. Katie is very opinionated about politics, and her involvement with them give the couple a lot of trouble in their relationship, not to mention in their careers.

I'll admit that I was kind of half-watching this while working on the computer, but it actually took me a little while to figure out the time period in which the story took place. It wasn't until the day of FDR's death that I found out we were in the 40s, and I was surprised, especially considering Barbara Streiand's very 70s makeup and the distinctly 70s look to all of Redford's clothing. Something else that drove me crazy was that Robert Redford was in his late 30s and playing a college student in the early scenes. Neither actor looked even close to college-aged, and the makeup department didn't seem to do much to even pretend that they aged throughout the movie, which spans a good number of years.

Well, let's get on to my real thoughts, which are about how terrible this movie is. It's terrible because it was obvious from the start that these two people did not belong together, and because there was nothing about Katie's character that would have given Hubbell any reason to love her. She was so opinionated and unchecked about her political beliefs that she couldn't tolerate a single word contrary to what she believed.

But the most terrible thing about this movie is the foundation on which these two begin their relationship. They barely knew each other existed in college. Years later, they meet in a bar, where Hubbell is drunk. Katie brings him to her apartment for a place to sleep. He sleeps naked, and when she checks up on him, she is so desperate for love that she disrobes, joins him in bed, and lets him make love to her in his drunken state (which almost looks like it's completely in his sleep, and he doesn't remember anything the next day). The scene is meant to show how lonely she is. Fine, she's lonely. But she's also taking advantage of Hubbell, because he doesn't know what's going on and has no memory of it. That's called date rape, folks. She doesn't tell him about it the next day, or ever, and lets their relationship build without ever telling him about it.

So let's summarize, shall we? They have nothing in common in their college years, nothing in common later on, disagree drastically in the political realm, come from different social circles, and their relationship begins after a date rape has occurred and has been lied about (by omission). Katie's character is able to develop some as the years go on which gives the movie slight redemptive value, but I just don't understand why I should watch a movie about a relationship that's destined to fail.

I can't understand why this is considered one of the best love story movies in existence. For me, it was an experience of annoyance, shock, and boredom.

I saw a link to this over at The Animation Show.

Adjustment is a spectacular short film that absolutely everybody must watch. I would like to describe what it's like, but I think the work speaks well for itself, and it's only a few minutes long anyway. I'll just say that it is a phenomenal bit of film making that does things with live action and animation that I've never seen before. Also, the animated bits are perfectly woven into the story for maximum emotional effect.

I could go on, but it would be easier for you to just watch it. Promise me you will.

Don't forget that tonight marks the return of Jericho. If you haven't caught up on watching this show or haven't checked it out yet you can watch all the first season episodes at the site. I rented the DVDs last week and have been hopelessly sucked in. It's quite a captivating show. Hopefully it will perform well during this run and be renewed for another season.

Hey guys!

Well, all our stuff is now in the new condo (with the exception of a few fridge items I accidentally left behind)! Thanks to the help of Paul, Cyndi, Ryan, Amy, Rob, Dee, my sister, Ric's parents, and the piano movers, we managed to get everything inside. And that was no small feat, considering it's a two-story place, the media cabinet from the bedroom was too large to fit through the bedroom door (so it went over the patio wall), and the desk had to be unassembled to make it upstairs.

Now we just have to put it all away, but not until we're done painting in certain areas. I've been working on trim in the office so that we can get that room together, and then we can put some boxes in that room while we figure out the configuration of the living room. The bedroom is all painted and just needs the media cabinet top to be put back on. The downstairs bathroom needs a second coat of paint on the walls and a fresh coat on the cabinet. The kitchen cabinets need sanded and painted, with new hardware. The upstairs bathroom needs everything re-painted. The hallways, office, living room, and bathroom all need painted trim. So yeah. I have a lot of painting to do.

We knew when we bought the place that the dishwasher was crap. Our inspector even said it wasn't in working order, but the sellers claimed it was. We said "whatever" and didn't push it, since the sellers didn't have any money to be buying replacement appliances. Part of the reason we bought the place was because the asking price was well below the norm for a place of this size. So a little bit of extra spending didn't scare us. As a result, we need to buy a new dishwasher. We also knew the water heater was 22 years old, so that needs replacing as well. Lastly, we need to get a washer and dryer set. We were going to wait to buy some of it, but the dishwasher is nasty and needs replacing now. And the water heater seems to have a bit of a drip-leak, which indicates it doesn't have long until it commits suicide, so we should just avoid water damage and replace it asap. And we have a 10% coupon for any purchase at Lowe's. Basically, it's now or 6 months from now, but all of it needs to be purchased, so we're just gonna do it now. Bye, bye, money! Lowe's is totally making bank off of us this month.

Up this week: painting, of course. I think we're going to head out to Disneyland for Valentine's Day, since we were too busy to think about making plans. And our gifts to each other will be so romantic: we've each promised to buy each other something for fixing up the condo. Haha.

Pictures to come later on, as we make more progress.