heebyjeeby

Blindsight, by Peter Watts. Um. Read this book. Do it. Now. Do it. It's like Evolution's Shore times 2001 times everything every scifi show ever wasn't, times...uh...I could go on. Ok wait, backing up, this is a bit of challenge to read and comprehend. I know it'll take me at least another reading to feel like I more fully get it. But not in a frustrating way, more like, damn but I wish I was more smrt. Watts takes his usual tact of placing bleeding-edge, unorthodox characters in tight quarters, and then shaking the container with morally ambiguous and paradigm-challenging situations. And makes the scariest, most plausible vampires, ever. And! And. The scariest, most plausible aliens, ever. Those points, plus Watts's usual bevy of research and notes in the appendices, should be more than enough points for whoever is reading this to go out and get the book. Clickclickclick.

Cotard's Syndrome is also freaky-deaky

-interesting: beer made out of trees

-Moray eels are the ancestors of aliens, that's all there is to it

I will smack you in the face.

The Ten, with a big ol' ensemble cast. Ten short stories about breaking the ten commandments. Kind of hit or miss in some of them, but the majority were good, and the transitions with Paul Rudd, Jessica Alba and Famke Janssen really tied them together. I enjoyed how they created completely unexpected twists with most of the stories, especially, and Winona Ryder shone and really saved the movie in some instances. So, in the end, I'm going to come down on the side of it being a great, surreal comedy. Vvvvvahina.

Vacancy, with Luke Wilson, Kate Beckinsale, and a very very creepy Frank Whaley. I suppose it was kind of Hitchcockian, as it was purported to be, but I never really got that into it. And why on earth would they have a dvd extra that was nothing but the snuff films? Well, of course I understand why, but still. I don't know...the characters were certainly consciously developed, and the situation was as well put together as it was going to be, but...I was just never drawn into it. It's like the whole movie was kind of characterized by the lame ending - random hints and buildup, and then a big, silent word flashed on the screen which may as well have been "ANTICLIMACTIC." Which would have been a lot more hilarious had it been flashed throughout the movie.

-just because I'm all aobut brain exercise these days

-hemineglect: kinda freaky

startlingly interesting

"Elephant seals spend up to 80 percent of their lives in the ocean. They can hold their breath for over 80 minutes—longer than any other non-cetacean mammal. Furthermore, elephant seals possess the ability to dive to 1500 meters beneath the ocean's surface. The average depth of their dives is about 300 to 600 meters, as they search for their favorite foods, which are skates, rays, squid, octopuses, eels, and small sharks. Their stomachs also often contain gastroliths. While excellent swimmers, they are even more surprising on land, where they have a higher velocity than the average human when moving over sand dunes.

Elephant seals are shielded from extreme cold by their blubber, more than by fur. The skin on top of this blubber and its hair molts periodically. It has to be re-grown by blood vessels reaching through the blubber. When molting occurs, the seal is susceptible to the cold, and must rest on land, in a safe place called a "haul-out." The type of molt which an elephant seal undergoes is a catastrophic molt. While this is taking place, the bulls actually cease fighting with one another.

Elephant seals have extra spaces in their abdomens called sinuses where they can store extra blood."

on lucid dreaming - though, as I read the end of it, I got a huge wave of goosebumps in recalling the film Waking Life

trivia ballon

Being enclosed, protected, and kept away from dangers, children cannot help but enlarge their fragile egos in their daily lives, where they feel their lives as something dim. — Hayao Miyazaki

Does anyone else think that the descriptions in the Schmidt Sting Pain Index are hilariously specific?

Photography composition like whoa

Eerily pleasant

freaking girl scouts and aliens, man

Slither, by Edward Lee. Wait, wait, I'm still hung up on the ending. Which was pretty hilarious. Lee is known for writing novels that combine the erotic with the grotesque in extreme ways, basically one step up from pulp. I wouldn't say the actual quality of his writing is that great at all (for example, in this one he often gets bogged down in needless scientific language that just seems meant to show off that he did his research), but he certainly knows how to generate some real visceral reactions in the reader, with some images in this novel that almost made me sick. And then when I did yardwork I suddenly had a moment of irrational fear upon realizing I was holding a branch covered in little green bugs. In that sense, this particular novel is definitely weighted more on the grotesque than the erotic side, not for the weak of stomach.

Reaction (supplement-wise) to sudden cold, which seems to have worked pretty well:
(in the afternoon)
-3 garlic capsules
-1 vitamin-B pill
-1 calcium pill
-2 vitamin-C pills
-1 fish oil capsule
-2 tylenol-cold pills
-2 cranberry capsules

(and before bed)
-1 fish oil capsule
-2 tylenol-cold pills
-1 triphala pill

gnuh....sick

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, featuring the song, "I Like Your Booty (But I'm Not Gay)". Well...maybe if I'd seen more than a couple minutes of the show, first. I have to say, the humor seemed like something I should have been laughing at a lot more, but I was also exhausted when we we starting the movie already, and am probably sick. So it was probably funnier than I perceived it to be.

Supposedly, the worst poem ever written in the English language

A couple sagacious points about BJJ

each discomfiting in their own special way

Superbad, with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. Looks like movies written by Seth Rogen are turning out to be consistently pretty good, if following a pretty archetypical pattern, as Kevin pointed out to me last night. I have to say, though, as Kim noted with a poke or two, there were moments where I couldn't bear to look at the screen - humor based on discomfort is still funny to me, but something about it makes me so uncomfortable in turn that I have to look away. Still, overall, it wasn't an utterly hilarious movie throughout, but it was pretty damn funny without being banal or asinine.

Black Sheep, with...random Kiwi people. It's pretty flocked up. And gross in the old-school gore-flick sense. Funny, though, I mean, one can't help but laugh at sheep being violent. I was really happy nothing happened to any dog, I was really worried that they'd have a scene like that, which just would have ruined the movie. But nope! Just sheep sex and violence. Huh, and the special effects were done by the Lord of the Rings people, I thought they seemed surprisingly good.

Jesus Camp, with some horribly charismatic chilluns. Interesting documentary in that, unlike a Michael Moore film, say, there is almost zero pushing of the film-maker's agenda - they let the subject speak for itself. And it's pretty scary; we couldn't stop shaking our heads, muttering sad denials, and sighing. Basically: let's hope those little, fundamentalist, evangelical kids all get on a bus and ride off a cliff. I don't mean that. But the movie was kind of that scary.
--*--
Sweet jebus this movie looks fun

Whoa - I'm reminded of a particular scifi short story I read, wherein a guy has a little fairy (ie, child-ish sized) that's something of a perfect companion for him out in space (creepily, not just emotionally but sexually as well) and is an artificial organism in that particular sense

Huh, I'll look at cacti a whole new way now

ball of trivia

Wow, the Yazidi have a really interesting take on the Lucifer story-archetype

Cloudberries!

"A bagel is a donut with rigor mortis."

Whoa

a little OC

interesting quote:
"Compulsions…involve chronic, often ritualistic behaviors that we use to calm ourselves and reduce tension. We do not derive pleasure so much from the actual behavior as from the relief it provides...compulsions are typified by words such as I can’t, I have to, and I must, and so on...they act as a security blanket to cover troublesome feelings. Using Buddhist language, you could say compulsions are highly charged attachment. What separates a compulsion from a mere preference is the agitation and distress one feels if the compulsion is not satisfied."

This sounds like a recipe for a good fantasy-historical epic to me

Bioshock looks like it might be a fun game

Hmm...looking at the keyboard....I'd go with, um...."&"

hint: the initials are G and K

Flight of the Eisenstein, by James Swallow. With the Horus Heresy epic consisting of two trilogies with several novels in between, this is the first of those 'in between' books. Focusing more narrowly than the initial trilogy, I'd say Swallow's writing serves the story well in creating a sort of companion novel to the previous book. There are a few Rashomon-perspective scenes in the initial section, and more of an emphasis on the themes of the nature of nascent faith and its opposite number within the setting, chaos and sorcery (and the negative traits that those embody in turn). Though, the action isn't as great, but Swallow really has a massively tough act to follow, so I'll throw that complaint away. And! Something of the origin of the Sisters of Battle, and another interesting origin that is basically obvious only within the last couple pages, so I won't give that one away. So, basically, it's good if one remembers it's a companion novel for the most part to the initial trilogy.

Zodiac, with Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr, and a slew of other random people. Long. Ass. Movie. Mm, well, I take that back, there are longer ones, this one at least held my attention. It's definitely a quality movie, I guess I just found it hard to really like it on account of it inevitably not really ever going anywhere, as the case was never actually solved. I suppose a little more character development of the cartoonist character would have helped me; I didn't even realize he'd gotten married at one point - he just seemed something of a neutral space to carry the story, and the other characters even seemed to comment on his nature in that regard at a couple points.

Nanochondria sound like they would be cool, but I don't think I'd trust 'em

When I read the headline, Squirrels Outwit Rattlesnakes in Infrared, all I could think of was squirrels with little night-vision goggles (and if they can neutralize venom, can we learn to do that, too?)

Cusack + Freeman = not a bad fight scene

The Contract, with Morgan Freeman and John Cusack. It's pretty much a perfect movie equivalent of the kind of novel you buy at an airport or supermarket. Seems deep on a surface level, but it's really not; rather, it has some excuse for semi-plausible action, some tepid thrills, some mildly interesting characters, and a coincidence and contrivance-laden plot. But, it's not horrible, it's just kind of...fine. Which is fine.

Ooo, epic

Octopus Pie looks like it could be a fun comic

Random: got a photo used in a Denver travel website!

humnaglarblehigigiblesloo!!!

The nervous system teacher last night told us an interesting story from when she was in the forest service about an encounter with a man on PCP. When she came upon him (and he wasn't a very big guy, mind), he was tearing concrete picnic tables out of where they were set in the ground with seeming ease; when she tried to address him (though her horse was smartly wanting to back away) he could only scream gibberish at her. Apparently, PCP can make the user regress so that they're only using their brainstem, or, as it is sometimes called, the reptilian mind (for when it appeared on the evolutionary scale). So that's respiratory, heart-rate, digestion, and muscle tone...everything else goes out the window - for example, language, hence, the guy pretty much speaking in tongues.

Slash, this craziness. Anyone else noting similarities to zombies (think of the definition given in the first Resident Evil film), 28 Days Later, or Stephen King's novel Cell?

How odd is that animal?

And some what related, I didn't realize there was a set name for that (but...does that mean they'd have a beak where...uh...hm?)

BEST MONSTER MOVIE EVER, slash, not so much

Gwoemul (The Host), with...a big fishymonsteracrobat thing. The first portion of the movie was utterly hilarious, and just plain fun - something about the cinematography when the monster was initially rampaging around made it feel like an amusement park ride to me. But then, the movie kind of meandered....then got mired...then serious. If they'd just stuck with funny, then I might have been a lot more enthusiastic by the end. But instead, it just got kind of sad, for all involved. I agree with Kim in that it seems there's a lot of socio-political commentary going on in the story and characters, but I'm just not up enough on the situation there to get more than a basic grasp of it. Perhaps if we hadn't watched it dubbed it would have been better, but....no, it just should have stood of stuck with slapstick monster comedy.

Looks to be like a couple psych/symbol-utilizing games might be interesting

Also: possibly classy scifi

A wonderful article on systema, including conditioning, grappling, and even things like bodyguarding technique

*sniff* le cry

The Armour of Contempt, by Dan Abnett. As we noted at Kim's parents' house, you can tell it's British because of the 'u.' As usual, Abnett's writing style...well, there's just not room to go on about it. Cinematic in the best possible ways, and characters that are impossible not to feel for. That said, I can see how one might say that this book is something of a let down; it's something that should in a sense be a climactic triumph, but instead it hardly seems to go anywhere, and the main characters are almost tangent to the meat of the matter. I think this novel serves some important functions, though - showing the evolution of the main characters, embodied in Dalen Criid's portion of the story, and his development as a character. And in that, and in the rest, characterizing the main group of characters as a whole by placing them so starkly within the impersonal, dark setting, embodied in the reasoning behind the liberation the novel is about, and how it is executed, and their part in it. I could obviously explain that better, but it would take an essay. Good read, in any case (but for the tragic ending, which is its own bittersweetness).

big, and squishy: tempting

well, Kim's got it way handled (pinched?) already