Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Entertainment Weekly has a Q & A with Mr. Moore. It's a pretty fluffy piece with stuff Moore has said elsewhere, but it's nice to see they're including his dissenting opinion in the midst of their Watchmen movie promotion.

I laughed when I read this:

About two years ago, Warner Bros. announced that 300 director Zack Snyder would be adapting that gold standard of comics, Watchmen, into a feature film. The response was nothing short of orgiastic — from just about everyone except Watchmen's own scribe, Alan Moore, who remains ambivalent about all the hoopla.

I would describe his attitude as anything but ambivalent.

I'm actually a little impressed with the interviewer, though, who shows a pretty thorough knowledge of and respect for Moore's career and takes the time to ask him about League Vol. III and his upcoming prose novel, Jerusalem.

And then there are the really hard-hitting questions that other people are afraid to ask, like whether or not he'll ever shave his beard. At least Moore seemed to be a good sport about it:

Should I need to disappear, then, if you see a sort of bald guy with a really bad shaving rash going around somewhere, then that will probably be me.

Can't wait to see this trailer on the IMAX screen tomorrow night.

edit: In the time between when I watched the teaser and when I posted the video, it got taken down. If anyone finds a good link, post it in the comments. It will be in front of The Dark Knight though.

edit 2: Film School Rejects has a copy up. Go! Go! Go!

edit 3: Found new version to embed.

Being a fan of Night Watch (not to be confused with this terrible movie) and Day Watch, once I found out that director Timur Bekmambetov was in charge of Wanted, I was sold. And, perhaps, Scotsman James McAvoy had a teeny bit to do with my wanting to see the movie.

I barely knew anything about Wanted when I walked into the theater, except that it's about a guy who is suddenly thrust from a boring life into a world of professional assassins. And, that basically is the premise. Wesley works in a cubicle and is living the Office Space life with a witch of a boss. He has a girlfriend, who cheats on him with his work buddy, and he has almost no money. One day at the store, a beautiful woman approaches him to let him know his father, an assassin, was just killed, and that the man who killed his father is now after him. The man in question arrives and a shootout and car chase ensues, and soon Wesley is told that he has inherited everything from his father and can join the assassination crew, who (get this) receive the lists of whom they are to kill by reading flaws--which translate to binary-- in a fabric that is pieced together by a giant loom. No joke.

When the movie first started, it felt a little bit hokey. The first big scene where the audience was exposed to the special assassin tactics (they are actually born with the ability to sort of experience the world in slow motion by adapting the speed of their own bodies) made the audience laugh. There's a lot of time spent in exposition at Wesley's work, which seemed like it could be edited down a bit. And McAvoy's American accent sounds a little bit odd as well.

But, when the story gets moving, all the hokey feels like a friendly hokeyness, like you might experience while watching a humorous Asian action film. It's kind of like Fight Club meets Kung Fu Hustle.. or maybe Rumble in the Bronx would be a better comparison.

Anyway, the idea of weavers (Josh, when the movie started, I thought they were using "weavers" in the Robert Jordan sense, but they were actually talking about guys who weave fabric!) and the loom of fate, as I like to call it, are ridiculous. But the movie has a fun sense of humor and some great action sequences. One certainly laughs at some of the ridiculousness, but once I saw a certain sequence with rats in it, I was sure that the filmmakers wanted (hey, that's the name of the movie!) us to laugh.

By the end, we all walked out thoroughly entertained, even despite the fact that the movie's big secret was revealed while the sound went out in our theater. If I were you, I'd probably wait to see it at the cheap theater, but obviously, only for those of you who like weird, funny, sometimes tasteless, and sometimes bloody action flicks.

Here it is (sigh).

The more I see of this film the more disappointed I prepare myself to be. From the looks of this footage, Zack Snyder has turned the most complex and sophisticated superhero story in the history of comic books into a glitzy CGI-fest.

I don't mean any personal disrespect to Snyder. I think he did well with 300, a comic book that is itself all style and little substance. But for a movie to capture the subtlety of Watchmen it must have a director who is willing to resist the temptation for big special effects shots and create a realistic world populated with authentic human beings, and I just don't see that here.

What I do see are lots of special effects and flashy CGI shots.

I understand that this is just a trailer, and it may be playing up the action to get people interested, so I'll reserve final judgment for when the film comes out. I have to say, though, that I'm not expecting much. It may turn out to be a fine summer action blockbuster, but I doubt it will come anywhere near the subtle complexity of the source material.

mental_floss Blog » The Quick 10: 10 Random Facts About Disneyland

"The Happiest Place on Earth" is 53 today. I'm sure it's no where near as crowded as it was during my first week of working there on the 50th anniversary. As much as I sometimes dislike the place, I love it even more. It's one of the places that I will always have fond memories of, that while it's changed quite a bit in the last 53 years, it still has an element of timelessness to it. There's something special about going there and being able to stand in the same spot in front of the castle that I stood when I was three years old, holding my father's hand and looking in wonder. Maybe I'm just a big sap, but if you've been there more than once, you probably know what I'm talking about.

There's going to be a panel at Comic-Con with Dan Akroyd and Ernie Hudson. It's during another panel I really want to go to, but I might just skip that.

Wow, I thought I'd be up to almost nothing this week, but actually, I've only been home long enough to sleep and watch the premiere of Project Runway.

Monday at work, we all went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant to celebrate some birthdays. That night I went grocery shopping and figured I'd rest, but Ric was up for a movie, so we went to see Semi-Pro. Review to come, as always! The list gets longer and longer.

Tuesday, we had an office party at work for the birthdays. That afternoon, I got an IM from Tina, an old friend from high school, who said that Gina, another one of my friends from high school, was in town and they wanted to have dinner together. I have missed almost every time they have invited me to hang out because I'm either out of town or already have something I have to go to. So, they finally caught me on a day when I had no plans, and we all caught up with each other at the Yard House in Irvine. After the restaurant, we asked the Merry-Go-Round attendant to take our photo, and she actually let us ride for free before the photo shoot. That was nice of her. It was good to catch up with old friends, although also a little bit weird to realize how much time has passed and how many things have gone on in our lives that we missed out on.

Here we are, 5 years after the last time we saw each other (my wedding) and 10 years after the last time we hung out together. I think I'm the only one who looks almost exactly the same. I don't like change:

Wednesday we didn't have any parties at work, but we went to a financial advising appointment and then had movie night with Ryan and Amy. My dad called last-minute to say that Stray Dog needed some food, so we make a quick stop before movie night to pick up some food from the store and drop it by my parents' house. My dad had taken the dog to get groomed. He's a cutie. Anyone want to adopt a friendly abandoned dog?:

On top of all that, we're meeting up with Kristen tomorrow evening. I'm hoping that I'll have time enough tonight to actually see the upstairs of my condo and do some dishes too.

Seinfeld - Season 6

The Annotated Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I had a dream last night that Eric wrestled a pudgy, older Ultimate Warrior. Seriously, I have no idea where that came from.

Last night I saw Hellboy 2 with Curtis. It was all kinds of awesome. If you haven't seen it yet, go. Guillermo Del Toro is my hero.

The Bible Unearthed is a 90-minute documentary that aired on the History Channel. The sound gets a little out of sync on this YouTube video, but I haven't been able to find a better version. If you can't stand it, check your TV listings or just read the book that it's based on. The video discusses the Old Testament stories in relationship with what we can determine through history and archaeology.

The picture that emerges is very different from the story that the Bible tells. During the seventh to fifth centuries BC the nations of Israel and Judah were coalescing. Religion and history were both crafted to set the nations apart from the surrounding people. Their mythologies were eventually combined and revised into what we call the Old Testament. I guess that's why there are two versions of several stories in the Bible (e.g., creation and 10 the commandments). It's also possible that monotheism is not as old at the Bible suggests. The fledgling Jewish nations may have selected a god from the pantheon and declared that he was the only true god, not unlike what Muhammad did with Allah. There is certainly evidence that El, a very early name for the Jewish god, was part of the pantheons of several of the surrounding cultures.

I would love to hear what you think of the video. I just requested the book from the library.

I wasn't all that interested in WALL-E based on the trailers I saw, but I knew one thing: the movie was being made by Pixar. That alone is enough to get me to the theater, although I admit it's taken me a while to learn that lesson. I think the only mistake Pixar has ever made was the vocal casting in Finding Nemo (but I know I'm a minority on that one). So, Ric and I ran out to see the movie in its opening weekend.

Now, I have almost no anticipation for the rest of the summer, because I'm pretty sure I just saw the best movie that the summer has to offer. Am I exaggerating? I don't think so. WALL-E is full of creativity, made me feel more than I've felt at any movie this year, and was the simplest and most complex movie I've seen this summer. It could melt the coldest of hearts and is enjoyable for all ages. What else could you ask for?

Shoot. I've got to get to an appointment. Here's the quick lowdown. The movie is funny, sad, romantic, adventurous, and many other emotions rolled into one. It's a timely piece that criticizes our current generation. It looks wonderful and the textures are better than ever by Pixar. Even the credits look amazing.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and sing its praises to everyone. And now, the generic entertainment magazine quote, which is entirely appropriate here: if you see one movie this summer, see WALL-E.

Gotta run!

Plain View #89 - June 89, 2008

end of summer school

upcoming trip

treadmill

ipod

bourne flicks

no country for old men

crash

silly summer shows

will - church & the devil

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I just realized how freaking busy I'm going to be the next few months.

7/23-27: Comic-Con
8/6-10: Road trip to Tomfest with Phil
8/15-17: Catalina (maybe)
8/22: Crazy 4 Cult 2
9/20: Beck, MGMT, & Spoon at Hollywood Bowl
9/26-27: 10 Year Reunion #1

Am I forgetting anything? I hope not.

I've said it before and now I can re-affirm it: I'll buy a Wii whenever Animal Crossing is released. According to this it will be released at the end of this year. I was hopelessly addicted to the DS version of Animal Crossing and now I'm plunging into the Gamecube version, which is fantastic.

I'm convinced that Animal Crossing is the perfect game for OCD types like myself. It's the ultimate collecting game and also has some God game features to boot. I'm definitely looking forward to the Wii version. Hopefully it will have some great online features.

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust by Sigur Rós

So one of the reasons why I bought a PS3 a month ago wasn't just for MGS4, but also because I am a big Final Fantasy fan. VI (or III, whatever) was the first RPG that I played and loved, and I still go back to it to replay it. So since Square Enix had been going on and on about PS3 exclusivity, those $500 I spent were justified.

And now they announce that it's also coming for the 360. Which is good for all the people who only have one or the other system.

Which doesn't include me any longer.

I guess console exclusivity really is dead.

brb jumping off a cliff :'(

Hi all,

I'm hoping to get in a few posts this week, to review movies I've seen in the theaters recently, and those that I've been catching via Netflix, Roku, and other miscellaneous sources. For now, it's a weekend in review, as always! I had a pretty packed weekend, but it was a good one.

Friday I buzzed out of the office right at 11:30 and went down to the student services offices to have my photo taken for passport renewal. I basically have to re-do the entire passport process because my name changed when I got married. Boooo! I picked up my sister at noon and we drove to a new theater to us - the Edwards Westpark 8 in Irvine. I don't know how long it's been there, but I'm pretty sure I've been missing out! Their selection is the limited of limited releases. I'm sure I'll be visiting it again, although it does take a minimum 45 minutes to get there from home. We went to see Tell No One, based on Nobody's high recommendation. We liked it a lot - review forthcoming. After the show, we sorted through traffic to the Brea mall and I bought some makeup supplies and a couple of sweaters. Yes, I'm one of few who buys sweaters in the dead of summer. It's an air-conditioned work thing. We headed home for a little bit of rest, then joined with Ric for dinner at the Fullerton Spaghetti Factory. Our waitress was odd, but we forgave her, and topped off the night with a second movie of the day: Hellboy II (review coming soon as well).

Saturday, I slept in. Ric and I had lunch at KFC and went to Lowe's for a few supplies. This time we bought door frames and more orange peel spray spackle, for texturing the bathroom wall. I just started re-visiting the Lord of the Rings trilogy on cassette, so I spent a couple of hours listening to Fellowship while working on bathroom wall texture. Around 4, I headed to my parents' house and picked up Stray Dog. We went to PetSmart to see if he had a microchip in him. Of course, he did not. We headed back home. From there, my sister and I drove out to Hollywood. We started at Amoeba, where we sold her carefully-collected singles from our high school years (she has back-ups of them) and used the store credit to buy all the new CDs we've been forgetting to buy lately: Coldplay, Supergrass, Bluetones, Spiritualized, Nick Cave, and more. After our long adventures there, we went to Astro Burgers for dinner, where our cashier didn't know what change to give us (the bill was $12.12 and we gave her $12.20 - confusing!). Around 8ish, we headed up a couple blocks, parked across from the Pantages, and walked to the Avalon (formerly the Palace) to see Supergrass. The show was energetic and the band made sure to play my favorite song, so I was happy. Here's a cell phone photo:

Not many bands can get me really excited for a live show, but Supergrass has maintained their energy over the years. I've been going to their shows for over 10 years now, and they never fail to entertain.

Sunday we went to church with the Andersons, as well as lunch at Mad Wolf. It's no wonder I feel gross after this weekend. I've had far too much unhealthy food. Anyway, after lunch we came home to rest a bit. I spent a couple of hours reading Atlas Shrugged and then got to work in the bathroom again. In the evening I watched the second half of The Innocents, and then Ric and I watched a couple of episodes of Sledgehammer and the Soup together.

Up this week: Ric's got a busier week than I do. He's going to some sort of preliminary minor league hockey practice or game tonight, a beer making class with Rob tomorrow, then on Wednesday I'll join him for movie night with the Agadonis, and on Friday I think we'll see Kristen for the first time in a looong while.

Movies in the review queue:
Wall-E
Wanted
Tell No One
Hellboy II
Control
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Payback
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
King Kong
The Lady from Shanghai
Out of Africa
Frisky Dingo
American Grafitti
THX1138
The Innocents

Modern Guilt by Beck

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon's latest project starring Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris, premieres tomorrow. The first episode will be available for free for a limited time with the second and third episodes premiering on July 17th and 19th, respectively. I'm really looking forward to this and the big panel at Comic-Con.

Just wanted to share one of the pleasures of this summer. Most mornings I walk out to the back yard and check out the crops, finishing in my hops corner. I don't know if it's the relatively cool and damp summer we've been having, the fact that my hops have been in the ground for a few years and we're ready to take off, or that I build them a little makeshift trellise. Whatever it is, my hops are really taking off this year. I've even had to do a little thinning. Here's few pics. Don't want to guess what my harvest will look like when all is said and done, but I'll bet I will get more than one batch out of them this year.

The missing podcast has been found!

Plain View #72 - June 22, 2007

summer school

Hapkido demonstration

The Beatitudes

Last King of Scotland

Last Comic Standing

The triplets

Adult Adoptee List

Maly

New beer

go here for show notes

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In case you didn't know, today is Slurpee day. You can get a free 7.11 ounce Slurpee at participating 7-11 stores. As some of you might now, I'm quite fond of this tasty nectar of the gods. I've definitely cut back over the years but when I was in high school it was a normal thing for some of my friends and I to drive 30 miles in search of certain elusive flavors, especially the ultra-rare Sprite. These days I tend to go for the classic combination of Cherry and Coke. Some of the new flavors are a little too sweet for me. Maybe that's a sign of aging.

Everyone should go now to the Rabbit Room and purchase Ben Shive's album. It is incredibly stupendous, and you will agree or you will be dead by October.

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

Today, for the first time ever, I paid money for a music download.

I've resisted until now because I still see downloading music from iTunes as paying too much money for an inferior product. For $10 you get music that is lower quality than a CD and comes with DRM that prevents you from using it however you want. My case has only been made stronger by the fact that Amazon, to compete with iTunes, now offers most new CDs for $9.99 (my new Beck CD is on the way as I write this).

But this morning I saw a deal I could not pass up. Rhapsody was offering The Complete Led Zeppelin for $9.99. That's every studio recording and every official live album for $9.99. Plus, the downloads are 256kbps mp3 files with no DRM.

How could I not buy this?

The link for the product was here, but it no longer goes to The Complete Led Zeppelin. In fact, I don't see that offer anywhere on the site anymore, which means it was either a very limited offer or a mistake. Either way, I now legally own Led Zeppelin's complete catalog and I'm only $9.99 poorer for it.

By the way, I found out about this offer through www.passwird.com, a great way to find Internet deals.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Zeppelin to listen to.

I was going to set a reminder to post this on June 12th but I got caught up with the move and other things. June 12th 1998 was a big day for me for two reasons. First, it marked the release of Can't Hardly Wait, which in my opinion is the ultimate 90's teen movie since so many prominent 90's teen actors are in it. Also, I had a huge thing for Jennifer Love Hewitt at the time but it was thanks to this film that I discovered the beautiful Lauren Ambrose. I was also impressed that a teen movie from 1998 used a Yaz song in its big closing scene.

June 12th 1998 was also the day I graduated high school. The picture above was taken the next day. I remember the day I graduated very fondly. I slept in a bit and my friends and I skipped graduation practice in the morning to go see Can't Hardly Wait. We had lunch together then went to the ceremony and then bummed around our various graduation parties, collecting presents and eating until we could eat no more. I honestly felt like I was on top of the world. I guess a lot of people do when they are 18 and have their whole future ahead of them.

10 years later, here I am. I feel like I've come a long way since then in some areas, not so much in others. I'm starting to get emails about the big reunion coming up. I'm kind of freaking out about seeing certain people again. I'm also excited. I keep asking myself where all the time went. I've also become super nostalgic, hence the renting of Can't Hardly Wait and browsing old friend's profiles on MySpace and Facebook. At least in this digital age we live in hyper-nostalgia is easily cured.

Grisoft modifies its free AVG product after complaints | Defense in Depth - computer security, hacking, crime, viruses - CNET News.com

In a statement on Saturday, Grisoft said "We have actively listened to the Webmasters who have brought this to our attention, and as a company we have reacted quickly to solve them." What it did was issue a new build of the popular free program.

To follow up on a story I posted last week, it looks like AVG has fixed the problem and listened to the concerns of their users and webmasters around the globe. Way to be, Grisoft.

Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series

The Simpsons - The Complete Tenth Season

First nerdy thought I had today was this, "what I wouldn't do for some splash damage right now." The second is like it. "I think my fish have a fungus."

Comic-Con 2008 :: Programming for Thursday, July 24

OMG decisions, decisions. I'm thinking this will be my tentative schedule, if I can make it in the respective halls. I sense some camping in my future. Thankfully I'll have my DS, iPod, and a book or two. Here's my tentative plans (after the jump):

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New York-Penn League: About

For those of you who don't know, Ming Chen is the webmaster and tech guru for Kevin Smith and a good friend of mine. He is currently in the running for a logo contest for the New York-Penn Class A league. His logo is option one. Please take two seconds to vote. Thanks!

Interview: Guillermo Del Toro

I was just finishing my house and when I mean my house, I mean my house. I'm doing a man cave of epic proportions. My collection of crap was getting so big that my wife said, "Dude, you or us." I said let's move the things out. I bought a house five blocks away from my house, I put a secret book shelf door, I put a haunted mansion room, I am moving all my stuff there and I was planning on having that as my office for the next five years and then I got the call.

Question: Will you move the house?

del Toro: I'm going to lend it to a friend, a like-minded friend to live there for three years while I'm gone. He?s going to have 7,000 DVDs, 15,000 comic books, but the only thing he can't touch is my toys. I have many iterations of Disney's the Nautilus. I collect haunted mansion memorabilia; I collect any iteration of Chernabog the demon from Fantasia. I own two of the original sketches that Kay Nielsen and the other artist pitched to Disney. I am an obsessive collector and I've said in the past, mercifully I do dress like shit and I drive a really old car, so the only vice I have is collecting this stuff.

Ah, another Haunted Mansion nut. I seriously love this man. He has definitely made his way into my top five filmmakers list. I'm super super pumped for The Dark Knight but I'm also really excited for Hellboy 2. My friend Matt attended the premiere and loved it. Can't wait.

NPR: San Quentin's Gym Becomes One Massive Cell

The link above will take you to a story about California's San Quentin prison, which embodies the problem of prison overcrowding in just about every state in America. I highly recommend listening to it.

Prisons in America have reached a point at which they are merely adding to the crime problem. When someone is arrested for minor drug possession or a parole violation, he is placed in the type of place described in the NPR story: a dangerously overcrowded criminal population segregated along racial lines. That man is forced to choose a gang to join, which teaches him a host of new criminal behaviors. With no rehabilitation or career education programs, is it any surprise that he will be arrested again soon after being released?

What is especially frustrating about this problem is that the only reason for it is politics. During the 80s and 90s a sure way for a politician to get elected was to talk about getting Tough On Crime and creating harsher sentences for minor criminals. This approach was very effective at winning elections, but we are now faced with the real-life consequences.

What's even more depressing is that there is no easy solution that policymakers are willing to take. The only way to decrease prison populations is to stop putting people away for minor crimes and parole violations--but suggesting we go easier on criminals is political suicide.

So our politicians continue to play at being Tough On Crime to win some easy votes, and we continue to add to our overcrowded prisons without considering any lasting solutions.

Boy, I'd heard the twos would be bad, but I never imagined it would be this bad. Daniel is just impossible to reason with.

When we're picking up the house, it is very important to him that everything be put away neatly and in its right place. And if we put his things away for him he gets upset because he wants to put them away by himself.

And what a struggle eating is! Today at lunch he wouldn't eat his sandwich because he just wanted to eat his raw carrots and broccoli. Even after he finished his, he was asking me to give him more carrots off my plate.

And then there are the problems with his baby sister. Daniel is constantly wanting to hug her and kiss her and read to her. It's unbearable.

I just don't know how much of more of this difficult behavior I can take.

(Seriously, though: I'm amazed at what a sweet and cooperative little boy Daniel is. How we ended up with him I have no idea)

Hi all,

Just a quick long weekend in review!

I had a lot of intense data entry work Monday-Wednesday at work, so I took off an extra day on Thursday to give myself an extra long weekend. I spent Wednesday night and all day Thursday and Friday at my in-laws' house, hanging out with the visiting Arizona family. My nephews are so cute, but are soooo difficult to keep up with! They went swimming three times a day! On Thursday, a family who have been friends with Ric's family for many years came to visit while on their vacation. We spent the evening talking and watching the kids play in the pool.

The 4th was an interesting day. I went with Angie and nephew Jack to the park, and befriended a stray dog. Since he didn't run away from me, I picked him up and took him to my parents' house. He's staying in the back yard while I put up posters around the area and post online. In the evening, the fireworks being set off on the in-laws' street were incredible. I don't think I need to go see actual shows anymore, since they've got the real deal in the neighborhoods now.

Saturday I slept in and then went on a useless drive, trying to return an audio book in a slot that was too small for it, and going to a library that wasn't open. Then I went with Ric to Lowe's to buy supplies for our continued work on the bathroom. We stopped by my folks' place to get photos of the stray:

In the evening we went with my sister to see Hancock, but the lines were long, so we ended up choosing Wanted instead. Review to come soon!

Sunday we didn't go to church, but we listened to Johnny Cash reading Mark on CD while working in the bathroom. I worked on resurfacing some of the patchwork areas on the walls, and Ric got started with painting one wall. We went out to eat at the Elephant Bar, ran some errands at Walmart and Target, and came home to watch Arrested Development and The Soup. One more AD show to go, and we'll be done with the series again. Our next DVD viewing will be Frisky Dingo (Adult Swim).

Up this week: grocery shopping, advertising a found dog, maybe Speed Racer at the cheap theater, maybe American Graffiti on the Fox, and maybe some work on the condo if there's time.

I hope you all had a good holiday weekend. Mine was pretty sweet. I did a whole lot of relaxing. I also put together my desk and finished unpacking my room. I should probably take some pictures since I know you all are DYING to know what it looks like. Now I just need to get a super long LAN cable so I can get some internet on my desktop. Curtis and I bummed around the place a lot. I have a Gamecube now since they are only $30 at Gamestop and Phil and Janelle bought me Mario Kart Double Dash so we played a lot of that.

I also have to confess that Curtis has gotten me completely addicted to Sex and the City. Hey, don't knock it until you try it. It's been a couple weeks and I'm already about 6 episodes into season six. Yeah, that's right, six. Fight me.

It's always nice to wake up on a Monday morning to see an Eric post.

I saw this over at the AV Club.

I had some trouble with the first half of this list. As some people know, I was pop-culturally unaware during all of the 1980s and didn't start listening to secular music until ninth grade. This has left me with not only a big gap in my music collection, but a general disdain for all 80s music. The few albums I do have from that decade are from the back catalogs of bands I discovered much later (thus the over-representation of U2 and The Flaming Lips you're about to see).

It was a lot of fun to pick out my favorites from the 90s on and discovering which albums were released in the same year. Who knew that Beck's Mellow Gold (and three other simultaneous releases) came out the same year as Johnny Cash's American Recordings? As my wife pointed out, I never would have listened to Cash at the time, but that's not really the issue here.

Anyway, take a look at my albums and judge my musical knowledge (or lack thereof) accordingly.

1979: The Wall by Pink Floyd
1980: Boy by U2
1981: October by U2
1982: Concert in Central Park by Simon and Garfunkel
1983: War by U2
1984: The Unforgettable Fire by U2 (see what I mean about my lack of diversity in 80s music?)
1985: The Flaming Lips EP by The Flaming Lips (I'm not sure if EPs count, but otherwise I have nothing. That's right: I don't own a single full-length album from 1985)
1986: Graceland by Paul Simon
1987: The Joshua Tree by U2
1988: Telepathic Surgery by The Flaming Lips
1989: The Offspring by The Offspring
1990: In a Priest Driven Ambulance by The Flaming Lips
1991: Mental Jewelry by Live
1992: Automatic for the People by R.E.M.
1993: Debut by Björk
1994: Mellow Gold by Beck
1995: Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips
1996: Endtroducing... by DJ Shadow
1997: OK Computer by Radiohead
1998: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
1999: The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
2000: American III: Solitary Man by Johnny Cash
2001: Gorillaz by Gorillaz
2002: ( ) by Sigur Rós
2003: Elephant by The White Stripes
2004: Real Gone by Tom Waits
2005: Illinois by Sufjan Stevens
2006: Ships by Danielson
2007: In Rainbows by Radiohead
2008 (so far): Third by Portishead

It's too early to call 2008 yet, and I haven't even had a chance to buy most of the new releases I want, but with new music by Beck, Nick Cave, Sigur Rós, and Bonnie "Prince" Billy it's looking to be a good year for music.

My best year for music overall is 1994: 4 releases by Beck, The Beastie Boys' Ill Communication, Weezer's self-titled debut, and Johnny Cash's first American Recordings album made it hard to pick just one.

hola. it has been a while.

how you doin brendo? what's been going on? what video games have you been playing? what kind of martial arts have you been practising? will you be in the san diego metro area any time soon? i was looking at upcoming concerts on the internet tonight... but i didn't really see anything that i could get excited about.
i have been in a zombie zone.

and hello to danny and henry and smiles and brian and jeri and luis and dave and lil rae rae and old man witherspoon and anybody else that reads this. lucas, do you read this? if so... what is happenin, fool?

yo henry, do you play any basketball anymore? i've been playing at least once a week. i should come to columbia and me, you and jeremy could play some basketball. are you happy that the heat got beasley?

i've been watching a lot of tv lately. not good tv watching, though. friggin zombie tv watching. hours and hours of espn news cycles. watching friends dvds with my girlfriend. i go through long periods where i have no brain activity. i will start to see my soul floating up from my body and then my dog will bark and bring me back to consciousness.
i've been going to work and not liking my job... but the intensity of the suckage of that situation goes through cycles. sometimes it barely sucks, or doesn't even really suck... and sometimes i get burnt out and it sucks balls.
i got a group of dudes from my work and we played in a basketball league and it was super fun... but what i wanna do is create a basketball team of all the dudes that i have played basketball with growing up and enter a league somewhere and get cool jerseys and shit. i just need to create a new super-town and move all of my friends to this new utopia and then i will also have to populate the town with opposing teams. maybe like seven medium teams, one hard team and three easy teams.
i could have:
eric
henry
my cousin jeremy
smiles
lucas
nathan see
andy hodges
my friend jeff from back in the day
brendan
j dub
i would also like more of my cousins and my brother, but maybe they should be on another imaginary team... anyway... what am i talking about?

my dog won't stop staring at me.
she keeps changing poses and trying new tactics to get my attention.

i think i'm done. hi everybody.

Slashdot | AVG Fakes User Agent, Floods the Internet

I've been a big fan of the free AVG Anti-Virus since I was introduced to it when I first started at Central. It sounds like that love might be running out though. Apparently the new safe search feature is causing a lot of problems for various websites as its webcrawler is disguising itself and flooding websites. These don't sound like the practices of an honest company or a responsible one. I'm going to wait and see how this pans out, but I might be looking for another anti-virus solution soon. Feel free to comment with your suggestions. Free and lightweight is definitely preferred.

Digg - News

It's still in beta and I don't know if it's available yet for everyone, but I just started using the new Digg recommendation engine. If it's available for you, you should be able to get to it via the link. I think it's really great so far. It makes the upcoming stories section much more usable since the unfiltered version is usually full of spam and junk stories. You can sort your recommendations by most recent, most matches (using Digg users with similar voting habits), and most Diggs. I think overall this will be great for Digg as a whole since stories that were once buried will have a better chance of getting noticed.

Leida recently emailed me to ask for a poem that I wrote back in college about Africa. A bunch of my friends went there on a mission trip, and I was swept up by their stories and wrote a poem about my own experience of Africa through their words and memories. Hope you like it.

streets

we stood on the dirt road
cracked and rutted
thirsty for water
blanched by the hot African sun.

in my hat I did not fear the sun
that had darkened his small face
but made his smile blaze.

this child I had baited with candy to love me
now followed me wherever I went
eager
inquisitive
warning me of his approach
with the soft clash
of small feet against crumbling ground.

behind him an old woman squatted
over a hole in the middle of the village.
a gust of dirt-filled air passed between us
carrying the smell of distant fires.

and his words hung vivid in the air
a complicated question
I didn’t know how to answer
“Are the streets paved with gold
in America?”

Part 3 of this series is here: Religious Autobiography 1998-2002.

After quitting my job at the church, I kept my promise to become less involved. I went to Sunday morning services, but that was it. No Sunday school, no Bible studies and no volunteering. This was the least involved in church I had ever been in my life. And for the first time I can remember, I stopped reading my Bible and stopped praying. I thought that if I just did the bare minimum for a while I might get interested again. I knew that it was possible that I wouldn't, but I didn't really care.

During this period I made a few posts to my blog about religion, but none of them were particularly positive. Then, between July 8, 2005 and January 24 is 2007, I didn't make a single post to this site in the religion category. I wasn't practicing religion, I wasn't blogging about religion and I wasn't even thinking about religion.

I had never been a nominal Christian in my life, but I guess that's what I became. Church services, an activity that I spent so much time participating in and even crafting, became strange to me. I didn't want to sing the songs anymore. This was partially because I wasn't sure if I believed in the message of the lyrics, but also because I felt odd chanting religious statements in unison with a group. What had once been a cherished activity now felt like subtle tool for brainwashing.

As for sermons, the best way to describe my feelings toward them is to say that they became less and less useful to me. The preaching hadn't changed, but I guess my approach had. I began to dissect them and to think about how they might actually benefit me. I guess I was less interested in the esoteric religious doctrines and more interested in practical knowledge. I was finding a disappointing lack of the latter. It didn't help that during that period the church had a long sermon series instructing the members to donate more money to the church.

Finally, two years after my resignation, Sara had had enough. She wasn't upset that I had become indifferent toward religion, but she didn't think it was right for me to sit on the fence. She thought that it was unlike me to not think something through and arrive at an opinion. I admitted that I had been avoiding the subject and I pledged to her that I would make an investigation and come to some sort of conclusion.

I decided that I would do what I did when considering leaving the Church of Christ and what I should've done when first dealing with my doubts about religion in general. I would research the issue from both sides. Here is a list of books in chronological order that I read between my talk with Sara in mid-2006 and my public announcement of atheism in August of 2007. I'm giving the full list even though they weren't all about religion. Even some of the fiction books played a role.

The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog by James W. Sire
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Raising Holy Hell: A Novel of John Brown by Bruce Olds
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina by Frank Rich
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Darwin (Norton Critical Edition) by Charles Darwin, Philip Appleman
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward
The God Who Is There by Francis A. Schaeffer
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart D. Ehrman

I also had discussions with friends, both Christian and non-Christian. Through all these inputs, several factors were coming into focus. I was put off by the massive failure of the most theocratic president in my lifetime, and by the hateful, anti-scientific fundamentalists that have a powerful voice in our country. I knew several liberal Christians, including my wife, so I knew that that was an option. But I didn't know if I could consider it a reasonable option for me.

So, I returned to those three arguments that had salvaged my faith in college. Would they still convince me?

I had used the teleological argument in my teaching at the Church. I even recounted Paley's watchmaker illustration. The problem with that argument is that it was written in 1802, 50 years before Charles Darwin described an alternate explanation for the apparent design that Paley referred to.

In The Language of God, Francis Collins defends evolution and warns his fellow Christians that the teleological is a losing argument. That left me with two arguments, the cosmological and the moral. And those were the same two that Collins used.

The cosmological argument comes in many forms, but most of them run something like this:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe had a cause (God).

I always found this explanation to be very convincing, and I used it once when I preached at the church. That was a Sunday when an ex-convict I had been working with finally accepted my invitation and came to church. Later on, he told me that this argument didn't sit well with him. The question that kept coming to his mind was, "Then who made God?" I gave him the standard answer, which was that God did not have a beginning, so he didn't need a cause. That explanation didn't satisfy him then and now that I was revisiting the argument, it wasn't satisfying me, either. I recognized now that the first premise was stacked in the Christian's favor. The first premise must be worded very carefully in order to include the universe but exclude God. And I don't see any reason why we should take that distinction as a given. If time itself came into being along with the universe, and the idea of causation is necessarily bound up with the existence of time, how can something be caused before time even exists? The beginning of the universe is still a great mystery, but I don't think that God makes a satisfying explanation.

Collins attributes his version of the moral argument to the opening chapters of mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (which I've since reread). The argument from morality comes in several forms, but I think Lewis' is the most representative and accessible. It runs something like this:

1. Morality is an absolute law.
2. All laws have a lawgiver.
3. Morality has a lawgiver (God).

This begs several questions. First, if morality is an absolute law, then why don't we have a clear idea of what that law says? It's not found in our conscience, for nations, periods of history and individuals do not all agree on which actions are good and which are bad. This absolute morality is not recorded in any book that I know of. It's certainly not in the Bible. We have to use our own human judgment to determine which parts of the Bible are good (love your neighbor), and which parts are evil (enslave your neighbor).

Even if someone could establish that morality is very like a law, that would not mean that morality shares every attribute of human law. If you flip through the first few chapters of Mere Christianity, you'll see that Lewis uses the word "Law" over and over. He even capitalizes it. I think his hope was to bludgeon the reader with this metaphor and then slip in the second premise. Once you've bought the idea that morality is a law, the rest of the argument is easy to accept. But the problem with metaphors is that they break down.

As I revisited this argument I recognized that it had something in common with the other two. They're all promoting a God of the gaps. They are all creation myths, like the story that thunder was caused by Thor's hammer. Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean that God did it. Not only is it bad logic, but it's not a satisfying answer. Just as we can ask who designed God and who caused God, this argument leaves us wondering who gave God his sense of morality. I explored this question in an article about the Eurythro dilemma.

Is there a good way to explain morality without invoking God? I think there is. Much of what we consider to be morality is probably evolve