seriously, Marlena's death was just disturbing

Cloverfield, with Lizzy Caplan and several other attractive twenty-somethings. But she's the most attractive. This is one of those movies, like Ultraviolet, where I think I was ambivalent on it initially because of my succeptibility to succumb to the frames of others, ie, the people who I watched it with. But now that I think about it, I really liked it. I like monster movies; and I love movies that really make you feel like you're they're, that you can get into. And this had both in spades. I honestly wasn't too bothered by the camera stuff, just got a little impatient with it at times, but I can see how it would really really kill the movie for some people. It does make me want to get a fire extinguisher and first aid kit for the house, offhand. Like any good zombie/monster movie, it sets the stage for all sorts of imagination-games after. Good stuff, I hope they go places with the setting. Oh! And Caplan's character, interestingly, weirdly, had the same Malkavian pendant on that I had in high school...which exactly one and a half people might get the reference of, so...well, I found that strange and cool.

Better Off Dead, with John Cusack, and Diane Franklin, who is adorable as a French girl. Surreal, surprisingly so. At first I thought the mom was perhaps just soft in the head, and/or that the movie was just badly written, but finally I got through my stubborn framing of it to realize and better appreciate the willful absurdity. So, realizing it's just an insane movie (that perhaps accurately describes the psyche/perception of the teenage main character), I like it a lot more.

28 Weeks Later, with Rose Byrne and Jeremy Renner. Oh, and Imogen Poots, and Mackintosh Muggleton, who have some pretty fun names. First one was better, I think. This one, it was a nice expansion of the setting, but it was...stunted. The characters could have been developed more (as the one the really more developed lost his mind pretty quickly), the setting was worth digging into a good deal more (though I can see why they'd shy away from getting into political attitudes of other countries, but really, if you're going to expand the setting for the purpose of a bigger narrative, might as well go for it). So...yeah, I liked it, but it was an addendum, I think.

Jackie Chan in a Saw movie would be the saddest thing ever

Shanghai Noon, with Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan. Both of whom play their usual characters, like the little known dwarves (of the seven), Smarmy and Doofy. This was...a silly movie. Kind of disneyish with some wannabe adult moments thrown in...which doesn't really mesh for me. I guess the fighting was ok. Yeah. Not much to say about it, it's light fare, not too bad, not too great.

Saw II, with Shawnee Smith, Donnie Wahlberg (thought he looked familiar, but only by relation to his brother, I guess) and Tobin Bell. Agh! If only I'd not known the ending before hand, I'm sure this would have been hugely better. But alas. Interesting conceptry again, though the violence wasn't as glossed over as the first Saw, to my minor distaste. I like how they make every female cop ever look the same - that length wavy brown hair, strong cheekbones, etc. Pretty good thriller, a bit gross, not too scary.

New Soul Caliber, with funny special characters...though it seems silly to me, wouldn't the lightsabers just cut through any other weapons?

NSFW - by website, if not picture...can't say I wouldn't think for at least a moment about using it, though, heh

the shower scene is perfect.

Hatchet, with the girl from Buffy, the guy from Grandma's Boy, and an Asian guy who was a clone of an old friend of ours. Well...it was exactly what it purported to be, an old-school slasher flick. Which is fine. But it didn't really stand out for me, except in seeing the Grandma's Boy actor in a different role, and Harmony's chest, I suppose. I guess it was kind of mindlessly fun, but that was about it.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, with Adam Sandler, Kevin James and Jessica Alba. Ok, so, I'm going to ascribe it to the training done for Blade Trinity, but I have to say, Alba is pretty...uh....pretty. Except for the catsuit costume, not so flattering. Anyway, hey whoa Rob Schneider was the wedding guy? Weird. Anyway, I think they skirted the line between this just being mean funny and it being a kind and funny movie with good messages, however it was just plain fantasy at times. Still, pleasant and funny, with many a great moment.

Does anyone else find this word that Connie pointed out to me to be hilarious?

I wonder if Barney ever got it on with the media exec

Death to Smoochy, with Edward Norton, Catherine Keener, and Robin Williams. Much funnier than I expected, and much lighter than I expected. The stylization was expected, though I'm kind of curious what the effect might have been were it continued all the way through the movie, rather than just used as an introduction. There's a nice little expanded setting in this, and even a sweet romance, a little (slightly psychotic) redemption, Irish mob (suddenly want to watch Boondock Saints), midgets...an odd, crazy, fun movie. Norton: your young self pulled off a cheery role well! And Keener was pretty hot, too, offhand.

When a Killer Calls, with Rebekah Cochan and Robert Buckley. Ugh. So bad it made me angry just to watch it. By the time it got around to the end, I was literally tapping fingers an toes wanting it to be over sooner. Maybe the dumbass characters were more true to reality, of people being that mind-numbingly stupid, but I just couldn't feel any sympathy to characters being blythe to that degree. There was a little twist at the end, I suppose, but it was worthless without having any build-up from the rest of the movie; hell, it wasn't even a lack of build-up, but simply build-up to something else entirely. Argh!

Personally, I find the idea delicious:
"The Seven Up Bar was a candy bar comprising seven different chocolate "pillows", each filled with a different flavor. Flavors changed with the availability and popularity of ingredients, which included, among others, brazil nut, buttercream, butterscotch, caramel, cherry cream, coconut, fudge, mint, nougat and orange.[4] The high manufacturing costs and trademark issues with a soda manufacturer, today Cadbury Schweppes, caused the bar to be retired in 1979"

There's a bunch of cute stories near the bottom; I like the rank of "Able Seacat," personally

It's so pathetically true. Poor SpiderMan.

American English, America forming, America a-broad, pun intended

Made in America, by Bill Bryson. A generally fun read, but I think I like Mother Tongue more, in the end. This one just went a little bit more into dry, tedious listing than the other, basically, though that's somewhat balanced by it being an interesting way of learning about the history of the United States. Being as it's about the English of the USA. Probably should have explained that first. Anyhoo.

3:10 to Yuma, with Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, and a few other people I recognized but couldn't put names to; and that actor from Firefly. Who dies...again. Sorry Connie! And! And. That guy from The L Word, who I couldn't place, the entire movie. Great western! Why? Because of the characters. Some of the secondary ones were pretty cookie-cutter, but in a way that was kind of necessary, and they made it work. There are some really interesting characters in this movie. And if anybody would like a play-by-play of how I think Crowe's character seduces the barmaid, ask me, once it clicked I wasn't sure if I disliked or respected his snake-charm character more.

Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and a random surprising amount of attractive women. Witty! And not too preachy or politicized. So, the kind of political movie I could like. The women didn't hurt that. And Julia Roberts isn't in it too much, so don't worry, those who aren't keen on her. In other news, I would like an office staff similar to Wilson's someday. That is all.

I'll admit, I'm a little intrigued by this bed, in a purely practical way

randoms

I think Ultraviolet would have been a good bit better if they'd made the pacing as frenetic as Crank. It already has the crazy stylization, and making it more frantic in nature would have buffered some of the silly and uncoordinated aspects.

Aha, I thought so, tango is useful

Interesting, though dense, article on Japanese culture

And a nice article on perspective shifting

It's interesting, offhand, how Palestinian identity has come to be associated with Islam; two Lebanese girls at my mom's school still haven't figured out how she can be Palestinian without being Muslim, it befuddles them. As a consequence, my mom has practically started to disengage from her identity as a Palestinian, as the Christian culture she diaspora'ed to the West with simply hardly exists in the land of origin at all anymore, and Christian Palestinians simply aren't what the international consciousnes views as Palestinian anymore.

I like how he throws up his hands in triumph after the schoolgirl part

Crank, with Jason Statham and Amy Smart. Popcorn action, which was pretty much what we were looking for. I was hoping for more martial arts from Statham, though - but I suppose the gratuitous nudity kind of made up for that (tangent to that, one of the oddest sex scenes ever). The stylization of the movie was nice, that's something I always enjoy, and that can carry a movie for me, as it did in this case. It's funny, because I could have used more character development, but the frenetic, short nature of the narrative simply precludes doing that at all. That seems like it might be a greater commentary on something, or could be...but, on the other hand, we have T&A and violence. And that's okay too.

A History of Violence, by John Wagner and Vince Locke. Huh, very different from the movie in some ways. It's much less violent overall, but then has a doubly violent and grotesque ending. I thought the husband/wife relationship in the movie were both more intense and more sensical, however they were more disturbing...and yet, perhaps the relationship (and main character) in the graphic novel is more plausible, in the end. There's more character development...though it's kind of a letdown compared to the movie...but again, it's probably more realistic, and perhaps should have a greater weight in that regard...obviously, there are thoughts provoked.

Suicide Kings, with Christopher Walken, Dennis Leary, and several people who apparently went on to have successful careers in television. Interesting, but it moved a bit slowly for me, and I just wasn't sympathetic to any of the characters except the straight up mobsters and the victimized woman, basically. They're all...well, dicks. Everything's tied up nicely by the end, I certainly didn't see the ending coming in that way, but at the same time, I didn't really care about it all that much.

random amusing quote:
"At the Constitutional Convention,, Elbridge Gerry would make a famous remark (curiously absent from modern high school textbooks) in which he compared a standing army to an erect penis – 'an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.'"

Knitta - silly, but benignly cute

a plethora, you say?

The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson. Though mostly about the English language, there's a good bit of information about language in general leading up to the main topic. Bryson has a lot of fun with curious trivia and interesting anecdotes, especially when he lets himself get in some acerbic commentary about things that are just silly. At the same time, though, there are some stretches where he just lists too much data that isn't very curious, and it begins to read like genealogy lists in the Bible. More good than not, though.

I Am Legend, with Will Smith, Abby (the German Shepherd), and Alice Braga. A generally good movie, but overall, a definite downer. After learning the plot of the original narrative, I was actually pretty disappointed by the more cookie-cutter way the film went down. I think if it had gone that darker rout, it might have ironically been less of a downer, in a way, because there was a twisted sense of hope in that original. Less cookie-cutter, more perspective shifting. The monsters in this were just a bit too implausible to be really scary, but the cinematography and acting made up for that somewhat. But the ultimate sin of a dog dying, however heroically, was committed, which generally tips a movie into way-too-sad, I'd say.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman. Also kind of a downer, but in a way that's more bittersweet (and expected, in the tragic sense). I find myself very much liking musicals, actually, and this is an especially good example, and that beyond it already starring a few of my favorite actors. Hell, I was even impressed by Sascha Baron Cohen in his short role, well played!

Razor, with the BSG cast plus Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen. Like a reviewer I noted put it, basically, a long BSG episode. But a good one! The flashback action got a bit silly at one point, but we allowed that maybe that was a throwback to the old school. Or a writer overindulging in their imagination, which, as a Farscape fan, I'll also allow. The temporary main character, Shaw, was interesting, and helped lend the formerly monstrous Admiral Cain a slightly less monstrous mien. All in all, interesting stuff, and it works well as a standalone.

Mr Brooks, with Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, and Dane Cook, oddly. And who apparently replaced Zach Braff? Huh. I get the feeling this was a novel, in how there was a lot of stuff I wanted more backstory on, and more information, and more detail...for example, I wanted to see a lot more of Mr Brooks' relationship and interaction with his wife. Or the development of his daughter. Or of Mr Smith's overall life, and what would lead him to be open to attempting to indulge in such behavior. I want more character development, darn it! My interest was piqued, but not satisfied at all.

-touching military slideshow

kind of magical

The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, by Vishnudevananda. This book was recommended by the philosophy teacher at Providence; I believe he said to snap up a copy if you ever saw it. And man did I get an old school copy, this is straight up 1960s all the way. Which, interestingly, isn't to say it's like the drug-addled or blissed out or third-hand stuff that does come out of that era. Ok, so maybe the sections on the asanas and pranayama are, but the philosophy is pretty straight-up classical stuff. Now, does that mean it's drawing from Patanjali's Sutras, which are the authority on defining yoga? Not quite, but I consider this author's sources in the Vedantic texts to be right up around there, at least in terms of these philisophic concepts, which the eminently practical Sutras don't often stray. A little tease at the interesting things might be the idea of different degrees of consciousness, which we often hear extended to 'intelligent animals' such as dogs or dolphins; in this model, interestingly, that gets extended in a fairly logical manner all the way through plants and rocks. Crazy stuff, but, not actually all that crazy, it's very logically self-consistent and self-aware.

Golden Army trailer - nice.

The Heartbreak Kid, with Ben Stiller and Michelle Monaghan. Yeah, it was funny at points. But in general...the overall, pervading (yet subtle) negativity turned me off a lot. I mean, it went all the way through the very end, and just teased at bright rays, only to laughingly quash them. It kind of reminds me of Sideways, in some ways, such as a main character whom I dislike so much it kind of kills the movie for me.

funny sentence (about a Swiss martial art):
"Traditionally, Schwingen is a male sport. Women have only been schwinging for few years, the Frauenschwingverband, women's Schwing association, has been founded in 1992."

I'd have an urge to play ping pong were I any good

Balls of Fury, with Dan Fogler, Maggie Q, Christopher Walken, and a little Reno 911 thrown in. I think one of the special features described it quite well - "a kung fu movie with absolutely no kung fu." Which actually isn't quite true, there are a couple decent fight scenes featuring the cutie Q, minus the stupid wire tricks. Nice to see a strong female character, though, who obviously is not subservient to any male. Yeah, it's dumb, but it's not as if it's painfully trying not to be - it's just a dumb, funny satire of Enter the Dragon and Karate Kid, with a good set of characters and actors for them.

Ratatouille, with Janeane Garrofalo and lots of rats. I thought it was cute, and better than I expected. I remember watching a third of Cars and kind of sighing as zoned out, but this film kept me engaged all the way through. The animation is top notch, natch, and there's even a cute little short that was quite informative about rats. Though in watching I reflected that perhaps I just don't have a delicate enough palate to appreciate haute cuisine, in my limited experience it's just seemed like very rich, expensive regular food in odd portions. So I didn't get hungry, surprisingly, from watching. On the other hand, now I do have an urge to get a pet rat upon Ms Kim informing us that they can just be let loose in the house, but it would either be a) stepped on, b) exploded by Ms Mattie, or c) eviscerated by Ms Rogue. So I guess that's a no go, alas.

A rocking, and slightly disturbing preview of a Star Wars game from Phil

Why do I have an underlying fear of deep water, you ask?

How come meteors don't land in the middle of New York, then? That's a natural disaster you never hear of...

HWAT!

Beowulf, with Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, and Sebastian Roché. It was okay, but wouldn't have been all that great without the 3D. Which was interesting, quite so, but...not all that necessary for most movies, I think. Actually, it was a little distracting at points, I suppose. I wonder if there's a market for 3D porn, offhand. That was an unrelated tangent thought. But think of the possibilities...Anyway. The highlight of the movie for me was the little Old English they used, I love hearing archaic languages like that out loud. The story was definitely changed, but in a quite sensical way that actually made it a cohesive story, rather than the odd fragmentary nature of the original. Of course, this script was written by Neil Gaiman, so natch.

"The Romans had no word for gray. To them it was another shade of dark blue or dark green. Irish Gaelic possesses no equivalent of yes or no. They must resort to roundabout expressions such as 'I think not' and 'This is so.'"

amble is a fun word

Saw, with Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. Where I thought it would revel in simple gratuitous helplessness, pain, and gore, it actually glossed through much of that with clever stylizing. Well played! I think that's part of what elevates it above mushbrain movies like I feared it would be, like, say, Hostel. That, and the gradual-yet-driving character development woven together with the plot. Like I said, pleasantly surprised.

Catch and Release, with Jennifer Garner, Kevin Smith, and Timothy Olyphant. Actually, ditto with this one, too. I think the word for this movie is 'ambling.' I'm torn between claiming it as unique and acknowledging some kind of cliche tropes (the best friend obviously secretly in love with the taken girl). Yet, whatever cliche there is, is at least mitigated by placing it in a narrative structure which I would go so far as to say mimics the kind of trout stream that flows in and out of the movie as a setting and trope. If that sentence made any sense.

In researching the ingredients in the 'detox' Yogi Tea, I found creepy eyeball berries

Didn't figure it was actually a technical term

'Poetry is the place where language in its silence is most beautifully articulated. Poetry is the language of silence. If you look at a page of prose, it is crowded with words. If you look at a page of poetry, the slim word shapes are crouched in the empty whiteness of the page. The page is a place of silence where the contour of the word is edged and the expression is heightened in an intimate way. One way to invigorate and renew your language is to expose yourself to poetry. In poetry your language will find cleansing illumination and sensuous renewal.'

trivia! WHAM! ball.

Get excited! In the long run, anyway, most probably won't come out for a long time.

Heh, why yes, I am juvenile:
"The word "avocado" comes from the Spanish word aguacate, which derives in turn from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word ahuacatl, meaning "testicle", because of its shape."

Woo! Cash Cab! Like Jeopardy, a game show I actually like

"When powdered bark is treated with tincture of iodine (a test for starch), little effect is visible in the case of pure cinnamon of good quality, but when cassia is present a deep-blue tint is produced, the intensity of the coloration depending on the proportion of cassia." -- perhaps this is where the combination of cinnamon-taste/smell and dark blue color for the spice in the Dune novels comes from - a combination of wealth and exotic (cinnamon) and the poison of cassia (the dark blue effect)

can you really silence a shotgun?

Hey! Dude with the cow, first payment, awesome.

The Golden Compass, with Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig, and Nicole Kidman. Unfortunately, it's been long enough since I've read the book that I didn't realize the full extent of how far this diverged from the original story. That said, I think the omissions of certain themes probably saved it for some people, who would have arbitrarily dismissed it otherwise. But at what cost? It occurred to me that this is kind of like the Dune movies in relation to those novels, to me - it's going to seem rushed and yet still overly complex (if not just disorderly) in movie form, no matter what you do, because there's such a wealth in each set of novels that it really just can't effectively fit into another format.

No Country for Old Men, with Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and several others. In one sense, I like this movie in aspects. The cinematography is amazing, and I love that wide-open terrain, which was done great justice. In terms of acting, there couldn't be better, and the structure of the narrative was lovely. But I think what makes me draw back from it is the sheer, subtle horror of what the characters do and represent - dark things in the hearts of men, it might be put. But oh so human. Hm. Pithy pithy, pithypithy. Heh.

Not quite tai chi-capoeira, but it's kind of close

Fleet Week = F/A-18 under bridge, almost supersonic

"My belief is that the truth is a truth until you organize it, and then becomes a lie. I don't think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and peace. What I tell people is don't be Christian, be Christ like. Don't be Buddhist, be Buddha like." - Wayne Dyer

unless they had a brown wig with white stripe....

don't worry, Rogue, I'll never subject you to such

that's one old dude

Un-freaking-believable - though, I do suddenly have visions of combat drones acting as such (from me da)

not sure what it is, but it's pretty cool (from me da)

from Phil, Brokeback Trek

also, anal sex, in the most loving way

True Lust, by Tristan Taormino. Basically, Love Line combined with The L Word (with more butch-ness, though written from a femme perspective) with dabs of journalism. Taormino adeptly brushes between gender and cultural theory and touching upon her personal experiences with everything from getting coached in masturbation to her personal opinions on various kinks and sexual practices, all within in a context of her own experience. And, on top of all that, in a very casual, personable, easy to read style. Well played, Ms Taormino. A nice collection of essays.

-if saw this through a telescope unexpectedly I'm fairly sure I'd yelp

-sounds like they should make a movie about Antar, to me (yay warrior-poets!)

emerald triviaball?

-No idea what it is, but it seems very interesting

-I always figured quantum computers would be pretty

-I forget that he was so contemporary:
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” - Pablo Picasso

-and wow, he was a bit sassy:
“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.” - Albert Einstein

-stress boob?

Aglaonema...ag-leon-ama....clever

Léon (The Professional), with Jean Reno and a very young Natalie Portman. Well, for one, I really like Portman and Reno, and often like Luc Besson's films, so I was pretty much going to like this movie, regardless. That said, it wasn't what I was expecting, which would have been simpler and probably banal - that is, say, the girl simply being taught to be a hit...uh, hitwoman. Hit-teen? Anyway, there was more depth and pathos to the movie as it is, though reading about the extended version, it seems that would have a combination of the two ends of the spectrum, which I'd like to see someday as contrast. Hm. And yeah, part of me wanted more action for some reason, but that really wouldn't have fit the movie so well. Oh, and Gary Oldman was amazing, as usual.

One of those things, not sure if it's clever or stupid

rainy triviaball

the hell? celery soda?

pfft: "Mountain Dew's name is a previously-existing euphemism for moonshine, which likely traces back to Ireland (see the Irish folk song "The Rare Auld Mountain Dew"), and has generally been marketed to highlight its potency. It was originally marketed as "zero proof moonshine" and had pictures of hillbillies on the bottle until 1973."

tempted to move to Kentucky and accomplish something

purty art

spherical moo?

Check out the last fight scene in Screamers, it's so simple, and the actresses probably aren't martial artists really, but it's also so effective in conveying the robotic nature and power of the combatants and in really making it seem as if they are pretty badass - with a little subtle camera shake, one almost quails away from a missed kick slammed up against a wall, for example.

Ah, the common spherical cow

downright impressive once they get going faster

the world is a crazy place

on Trinity, a comparison

Tucson needs a 'local stuntman,' I think

Hot Rod, with Andy Samberg and Isla Fisher. Uh...dumb. But, I suppose, that was perfect for the state we were in last night. It really did pull off dumb, without being the kind of trying-too-hard-to-be-dumb that would make me want to walk away. Ah, absurd is probably a better word for it - the story takes place in a kind of absurd setting, with absurd characters, which is much, much better than trying to pull off absurd characters in setting that doesn't match that. And as equally absurd as the plot was - trying to raise money for an ailing stepfather just so his ass can be properly kicked - that really did tie it together nicely.

-aw, I like ants...dang creepy fluke thing that probably inspired several horror movies

-we have to bring the Mesoamerican ballgame back (and give it a better name)

say it, it's fun - ye-ka-ter-in-a

Archangel, with James Bond and Yekaterina Rednikova. Rednikova was quite a cutie. And did anyone else notice that in the brothel, she was the only girl with non-blonde hair? I guess there was one redhead. Anyway...the idea of the narrative is interesting, but at the risk of spoiling it, that very idea is completely stymied at the end of the movie. Hence, I will label the story: "stunted." That, and I just could not bring myself to care about any of the characters, who all seemed very self-serving to various degrees, if not outright jerks. Not horrible, I mean, it was serviceable, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to see it again.

A creature of pure rage. That also uses tools. The adorable honey badger.

Teeth seems frightening on several semantic levels, ie, in terms of cultural context and response and ohdeargodteeth!

Interesting posit:
"There are three ways to make wealth: make it, mine it, or grow it."

dear god that "dress" was nipple-tastic

Hitman, with Timothy Olyphant and Dougray Scott. Aside from one particular fight scene, this movie really didn't do much for me at all. Well, I suppose the almost-always semi-nude Olga Kurylenko did it for me as well, but at the same time, she was almost-naked to an almost ludicrous degree. Reading about the games, I think the movie would have much better been served if it had actually followed the game's plot at all, rather than just taking the character and throwing out a few easter eggs. And the close-ups that pervaded the film were a bit much, I think; as in The Fountain, those instances perhaps better translate, interestingly, to a smaller screen. Sigh, I wish I could just take just the fight scenes out of some movies...

Rescue Dawn, with Christian Bale and Timothy Zahn. Aside from a wince-worthy special effects introduction, the greater part of this movie seemed carefully crafted in terms of cinematography and acting and appearance. Other than that (oh, and a strange, almost incongruous ending), it seemed less a film than a kind of journal based on some real experiences. I think I would have appreciated it more had there been a documentary-style narration accompanying it, as I felt that either I was missing a lot, or a lot was being left out in terms of explanations and information. Or perhaps that was just replicating the POW's experience...hm.

A nice collection of (mostly vintage) articles on Savate and its offshoots is under "Essays"

On good attitude: "Keeping his units concentrated and moving deliberately, Smith made an aggressive assault to break out of the reservoir. When asked if the Marines were retreating, Smith explained that their fighting withdrawal through Chinese lines did not constitute a retreat. His explanation was abbreviated into the famous misquote, "Retreat? Hell, we're attacking in a different direction!""

Happy Pre-Turkey Day!

I thought this quote was very true and wish I'd had it to use in my thesis on Frank Herbert's Dune:
"Arizona and the Southwest tells you one sure thing: Everything that matters is here and it is in peril."

And that this one was just interesting:
"Once Bil had tracked a coyote in the snow of the mountain and this trail had led to a roadrunner with broken wings and a coyote blinded in both eyes by the bird. He had to destroy them both..."

Also, lastly, the idea that people back in the day titled their diaries and journals sounds fun, like:
"The Journal and Maps of Caved D. Couts"
or
"The Whipple Report"
Though I guess I did that when I kept a lyrical journal, calling it "Threnody's Song"

Fun little quiz, a few answers I don't quite agree with, but most are pretty spot on

I want a spacetreebubble

The Fountain, with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. As much as I didn't get the movie without Ms. Kim's adept help, and applause-worthy cinching-sentence (according to the room of people, anyway), I enjoyed it. Very...quiet, very artsy movie, with a lovely score and absolutely gorgeous golden palette and organic imagery. Also, there is great shifting acting (between the three disparate sections), and a melancholy but still lovely message conveyed by the narrative, made all the more interesting and rich by its resulting three (and more?) layers. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Employee of the Month, with Dane Cook, Dax Shepard, and a slinky blonde tart. Aaand, here we have: stupid. Well, I suppose it did have some flourishes, like a protagonist who is nervous around girls to some degree, and solid theme of doing anything for one's own satisfaction and pride, and the rest following. Then, there was Jessica Simpson, and eh jokes, and confused tropes of heartfelt or comedy or what. Eh, it was fine, I guess.

I like the helmetcams the best...psychos...awesome psychos...

I am officially interested (this was also one of my favorite short stories, just for the sheer wonder/terror of it)

folkcest?

A Mighty Wind, with Christopher Guest and his usual cast. I liked this one better than the last Christopher Guest movie we watched, For Your Consideration, I think this one is perhaps more cheerful. Even kind of poignant at times. Not as hilarious as Best in Show, though. The deadpan humor is not for everyone, but in the same sort of vein as The Life Aquatic, there's an endearing cast of characters that makes for a relaxing movie.

The Quiet, with Elisha Cuthbert and Camilla Belle. Ok, so the main themes of this movie (incest, abuse of a deaf person) are certainly off-putting to most audiences. That said, I still think it's a pretty quality movie. Pleasantly twisty narrative, attractive cast, interesting dark cinematography, atmosphere, and music are all abounding. So, I'm glad I bought it for less than two dollars, but would have actually paid more to gladly rent it. Hm. That sentence may not have made sense.

Remember, remember the fifth of November...

...the gunpowder treason and plot.

Heaven, by Ian Cohen and Jack Stewart. And a coincidentally perfect companion video. I'll borrow this nice sentence from a review of these authors' other book: "Although their characters and world-building lack believability, the authors wield scientific speculation with cheerful abandon, providing some real old-fashioned sense of wonder." That pretty much sums it up right there, in what I probably would have said in several sentences. I will add that as much as it's hard to read in being...well, written by a couple of academics, it is artfully constructed in terms of structure, so that's something. Lots of incredibly interesting ideas, loosely shoved into an unbelievable, even for science fiction, setting. So, worth reading in the one regard, if you're up for the challenge of non-stimulation.

One thing I noted about the All Souls Procession last night was the odd beauty of hundreds of cameras constantly flashing. From within the parade, and from the multitude of people watching on the sidewalks, it was like a constant lightning storm. I wonder how a procession of a couple hundred years back would think about that.

-interesting burial alternatives

interesting history, in a few different manners

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. This being the progenitor of night every self-directed work from the 1930s on, I could certainly see where everything from The Secret to everything less popular got most of their stuff. Or, one might argue, they're all just speaking to universal principles, I suppose. In the same vein, the yogic texts of yore obviously came thousands of years before the 1930s, and they contain much of the same gist of things. All that said, this book is particularly interesting in my mind because, one, the sheer passion of its author - if the history textbooks that spoke to the same subjects (in some chapters of this book) spoke with the same verve and vigor, I would have become a history major come college time. And two, the manner in which the book was written, which was by true life experience, and interviews with some of the most historically prominent and successful people the time, ie, the richest people in the world.

It's funny, hearing a story from a friend at work about his brother-in-law getting in a fight with a bunch of Arabs after a road-rage kind of incident (I'm talking a literal fistfight in the middle of Alvernon), and then later finding the group's car and baseball bat'ing their headlights, I was reminded of a sensation I had often in working at the hospital, but rarely feel now. That is, that I am damn lucky to have the life I have. Remembering people I spent hours with at the hospital, I don't have theft as an everyday occurrence in my life (including people walking into your apartment and literally taking things out of your hands), or getting mugged, or just jumped for no reason at all, or get hit by a car and then left to bleed by the side of the road. I could go on. But for the majority of people, everyday existence is defined by massive, weighty debt, by omnipresent danger, and by utter despair at not only feeling stuck in that situation, but not having the slightest clue as to how to get out of it. So fuck it all, right? And so, in those moments, I feel a bit irked at myself in my everyday assumption that everyone has a life as peachykeen as mine. But, that's a good kind of upset, in the end, I suppose.
-
"Eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside." Mark Twain

homeypizzle

Been a while since I've written here, huh?

Though at first I had to get out my giggles at the bad-joke-potential brand name of the homeopathic supplement my sweet girlfriend had gotten me ("Wood"), I've been having a lot of fun researching the ingredients. The first few, such as Belladonna, are interesting plants in that if consumed in too large a quantity, they are toxic in downright horrific ways, and yet if consumed in a proper, miniscule quantity, they act as antidotes or medecines. In another sense, I learned about everything from medieval cosmetics to ancient abortion methods. And then there are some minerals (oddly used to make soaps and such) which I eventually figured out just have poeticized names in the homeopathic world, which I guess has a psychological school attached to it? Interesting!

What's really interesting to me, though, is the idea of taking the subtle essences of these things, and then - with some drops of what basically amounts to water beneath the tongue - affecting one's subtle body with it (ie, the bioenergetic, cakra level, closer to the soul, as it were). There's something almost poetic in the delicacy of it, and only compounded by the idea that, say, a flu vaccine is essentially a homeopathic remedy in that essence-sense. It's fun to look at modern medicine on a subtle (in the yogic sense) level.

--sidenote: the top ingredient in the "Fire" supplement is basically "honeybee"
---and another ingredient is essence of venomous pit viper?!

Does this seem a random association to anyone else? Well, I guess one could make a Silk Road reference.

"An Australian abalone diver miraculously escaped a Great White Shark attack in January after the shark half-swallowed him head first.
The diver's lead weight vest saved his life by stopping the shark's teeth from biting him in half and the shark then released the diver."

lingual...linguini....llllollipop

"Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem."

I wonder if that's why I'm so keyed into a lot of Sanskrit words, which are more specifically geared towards the latter paradigm.

mmm, smashy

bits related from weekend

--Worship is basically paying attention, in a sense. And what you pay attention to, you take on the qualities of, following a meditative principle (re: tratika, the candle flame meditation that maked you focused and clear, lighting up the dark, as it were). So, in that sense, worship in the religious sense is for our sake, not any god's.

--"If our civilization collapses, are you going to continue your yoga? I hope so! I hope you notice the passing, and continue on."

Well, Charlie Victor Romeo certainly sounds disturbing

aw, darn.

In a bid to update my wardrobe some from its monochrome spartan-ness (both for my own benefit and over time as a yoga teacher), I decided to get a little at a time, starting with this shirt.

And then spent a night and a day being disappointed by a lack of reaction to said shirt. I got one person say that they'd seen it somewhere before, which they probably had, being quite clever in their own fashion sense. When my girlfriend noticed, she thankfully had a gratifying reaction, immediately saying that is was certainly a shirt suited to me (yay girlfriend!). And then a guy at work looked at it quizzically, then laconically pointed out that if someone didn't know what a haiku was, the shirt is basically nonsensical. As the guy next to him laughed uncomfortably, knowing he should be laughing but not really understanding why, I felt kind of bad in the end.

The lesson? Just take satisfaction in displaying what amounts to my sense of humor upon my chest.

In other news, this is basically like where I work. Except with less rancor.

let's see, y=25, minus...hm..nope.

The Number 23, with Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen. Well, it was better than I expected, considering the poor reviews I'd heard of it. I think a darker ending than the kind of complacent one it had would have served it better, though the whole premise was kind of shaky to begin with (the numbers thing being like a horoscope in that you can apply it nigh however you want). The dream-y bits depicting what's happening in the eponymous book are fun, though.

Kind of tempted.

oddly reminiscint of respective national character

Layer Cake, with James Bond and Chief O'Brian, and The Bourne Ultimatum, with Maaaat Daaamon, and the shrew from 10 Things I Hate About You. In two sentences. The former movie (limey), is very stylish, high quality cinematography, well put together, and full of clever twists....but plaid (as Kevin adroitly put it, a twist at 60mph is exciting, while a twist at 10mph...not so much). The latter (merrican) is kind of excessive, shaky, badass, in-your-face, and awesome.

interesting posit:
"The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some 'other.' Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose..."

Kind of a scary headline(reminds of some novel I read in like 6th grade, I think, about a space plague or something)

la la triviaballon

Mmm, eerie pretty

Go spiders, go spiders...you're the...uh...spiders! (aka go team!)

I applaud the clever

From Wyatt, best football game ever

would make a fun comic book

City Infernal, by Edward Lee. Ironically, for as much as one might think that a story mostly set in hell might be the most shocking and disgusting of Lee's stories, it's really not at all. The bits that are a bit shocking just aren't really, in just being so over the top and fantastic as to be ludicrous. That's not to say it isn't kind of a fun read, with a few twists and turns and a very (oddly, fun) imaginative take on the concept of hell. I just can't get the notion of the whole book being kind of silly out of my head. Weird.

Wyatt's counter

Posit: running off the idea that "all models are inherently incorrect on some level - some are useful," isn't reality as we perceive it simply a model constructed by our sensory input? Reality as a useful, but ultimately inherently incorrect model. Hm. Puts one of yoga's goals of "seeing things as they are" in a whole new light.

Hopeless romantics unite!

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

ugly fashion, yellow junk, coobs

The Devil Wears Prada, with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. I'm torn between saying this was a really good stand-alone movie, and positing that perhaps it would have actually just been really good had one read the book. I suspect that latter on account of the carefully constructed phrasing in some scenes, which I'd bet was taken directly from the book, and so would have been more appreciated with that context. But anyway, what I found really interesting about this movie (besides reflecting that I thought nigh every 'fashionable' outfit was utterly atrocious) was the connection it made in my head to the novel Evolution's Shore. That is, the main character in the novel is driven by her own ambition rather than by her job/boss context and becomes a monster in her own special way, but generally there's a lot similar between the texts in the development of that main character. Devil is just romantic-lite, Evolution is more dark-mature.
-addendum...hm, well, I was going to add Connie and I's back and forth, but I'll simply extract that I agree about not liking her getting back together with the boyfriend, contrived, and just not right for her. Hell, now, if we look at Gaby from the analagous novel, she had to go through reporting on Chechnya-style wars for years, war-torn Africa, then further effort back in America before painfully re-forging a connection with her man. Not just have a coffee and a scone. Pfft.

The Simpsons Movie. With SpiderPig. SpiderPig. Doing, whatever. A piderpig can. Can, he swing? From, a web? No, he can't. He's, a pig. Look out. Here comes, Spider, Pig. Well, it wasn't as bad as it might have turned out. The beginning was hilarious, but as the prevailing opinion goes (and is correct), it gets kind of bogged down as the movie goes on. Generally pretty funny, though it didn't blow my mind or anything.

Cube, with McKay from Atlantis, and Ezri Dax from Deep Space Nine. Interesting movie - well, the movie itself isn't that amazingly engaging, but I can definitely see it making for good conversation. The concept is so simple, in a sense, and yet generates so many questions - what's outside the giant cube they're trapped in? Why are they trapped? Why them? And none of it quite answered within the text. I found especially interesting the point made on the wiki of the film that the characters undergo complete reversals by the end of the film - hero to villain, useless cripple to most important and then only survivor, poison to hero, etc. I likey.

-Gravity Pods - clever!

-dang thing is freaking me out...I think I saw it and then had an image of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing it staring at me from on top of the sheets

kertrivia ball

I love octopuses dearly for their interesting wierdness, but man, blanket octopuses are really wierd

Interesting article, both in regards to aikido and the psyche

How fun! Star jelly.

Funny saying: "God created man in his image, and man quickly returned the favor..."

Suddenly I'm super excited about the movies again

tranny Travolta vs chiweewee eating anaconda: GO

Hairspray, with Nikki Blonski, John Travolta, and Christopher Walken. I really liked this musical, though at the same time, I can't remember a single melody from it. I suppose in that sense it was more of a straight-up movie than an musical, to me, in that I wasn't focused so much on the songs as everything else going on. All the actors and actresses were perfect, and it's really a great story. Also, John Travolta. Fat woman suit. Yes.

Snakes on a Plane, with Samuel L Jackson and Julianna Margulies. Ew! Lots of gruesome death. But it's pretty hilarious. For as much as it's kind of playing into its own self-realized stupidity, it...well, it pulls off exactly that. There were even a few moderately serious parts, as much as I was expecting one of the pilots to go "Whammy!" and for a fat woman to get bit in the bajingo. Cult(ural) classic, right here. Now, I might go get one of those shirts from Overcompensating...

trivivia ball

-an interesting speech, given by a Moorish commander before a successful battle against the Visigoths; is it just me, or is it more negative than one might expect in the first paragraph?

-Manichaeism also seems interesting...anyone know more about this religion? I didn't really understand that much (besides some interesting imagery involving demons and virgins) from the article

-interesting thought to contemplate: "The breath is to the body what thought is to the mind."

-Spiderman vs Kingpin preview; looks to be some snappy dialogue

also: amusingly timed power outages

The Descent, with several British women, hongry cave monsters, and exactly one male cast member who was amusingly (and accurately) predicted by Kevin to die in a quite particular way. I think it was a great movie, with characters with some actual depth, in themselves and in their relationships, and all of that tied together with generally understated implications and expressions. The monsters themselves weren't so much scary as the environment, I'll note, but perhaps in a sense the monsters are just an extension of the environment - impersonally blind, practically non-sentient in general, but implacable all the same. Also, as much as one might be tempted to set up a female-vs-male dichotomy in terms of the human women and almost entirely male monsters, I think a more interesting tact might be that the women's subconscious issues with themselves and their relationships with each other, which are normally buried under societal niceties, are brought to the surface when the women themselves are buried. How's that for some punny imagery within syntax. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that it's like they're delving into their own subconsciouses, in a sense. Oh! Oh! And this is a spoiler, but did anyone else notice that it was the (former) mother who kills the child-monster, and then the mother thereof? It's like she finally confronted herself as the survivor of the intitial car accident, perhaps in viewing herself as the monster in being the only survivor, and then all that's left is to kill the woman who her husband was cheating on her with! Bam! How trippy is that? Anyway, I could go on, obviously.

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln seems like he was an odd and interesting man

yes. balls.

just a quote from a book I'm reading-
“Last night Edgar, an adolescent wirehaired Dachshund, came over to visit. In twenty seconds his nose located the errant tennis ball under the couch. He began digging and whining, desperate to extract the fuzzy golden globe. We showed him bones, chew toy, rope toys, interactive rubber toys, and heaven knows what else. He wanted the ball. Later that night I turned on the local television news. As much time was devoted to the fate of golf balls, baseballs, and basketballs as to world peace, world hunger, and medical epidemics. No wonder we love dogs so much. No one else understands our obsession with balls so well.”

Tragi-epic, and fluff...and, uh, soil

Galaxy in Flames, by Ben Counter. Yet another book in one of the bestest series ever written, The Horus Heresy. This is the last of the initial trilogy, apparently to be followed by several, more focused interim novels, and eventually concluded with another hugely epic trilogy. I enjoyed this one in particular, in that though it didn't go as far with character development, it really didn't need to - it's the conclusion for several characters, in fact; it rather, then, concentrated on using the 40k setting to its potential-of-science fiction craziest, and creating great action scenes. How? By limiting the perspective in any given battle to one character, the reader gets a helmet-cam view, which thus makes the writing wonderfully cinematic. Great stuff!

Accepted, with Justin Long, a cute redhead, a cute blonde, and John Travolta and John Cusack's sisters. Yeah. Didn't realize those last two. I wonder if one could write about this movie, engaging in terms of the theme of attempting to create a utopia of sorts. In literary terms, interestingly, that would place it under the meta-category of science fiction. Anyway, all that babble aside, it's a pretty funny movie, not going deeper than what most people who'd identify with the main character would daydream for themselves, and in that, it does perfectly well. And it has that interesting nod towards ideas about utopia and education.

addendum: ah ha! I just remembered where I'd heard the name Bartleby before - a really creepy story about a man named Bartleby who is depressed to the point of becoming almost supernatural, by Herman Melville. I bet the movie writers just wanted a funny name, though.

terra preta - intriguing

Things of Note - an Auspicious Weekend?

-7.7.7. Rawr.
-yoga students bring really interesting lunches - homemade protein-enriched granola, marinated octopus, kombucha....
-chanting the yoga sutras is inexplicably superfun - call and response Sanskrit!
-after a couple hours of Tibetan, visual, aural, visualization, walking, breath-following, and other kinds of meditation, the mental state afterward is...well, awesome
-hammies are a bit sore, though
-aw, man, raisins? really, dogs? did you have to? stressing me out all weekend, aiii
-yay school where you sit on cushions on the floor all day, and pull out shiatsu futons to watch a movie!
-for whatever reason, half the people in the class seem really, really familiar
-
-that is so hardcore

p-p-push it! mm, hot karaoke

Grandma's Boy, with Linda Cardellini (not the gal from Veronica Mars, as it turns out) and Allen Covert (not Mel Gibson, as we really actually almost thought at a few moments). Though it started out having me wondering whether the movie really was going to seem as oddly vapid as the beginning seemed to be, it really caught its own momentum and became just plain funny. Slash, gross. After noting that Adam Sandler was the executive producer, I noted a few similar tropes to Happy Gilmore - sleeping with a (much, much) older woman, hot woman acting as consultant of sorts and becoming love interest, arrogant and socially inept antagonist, and positive and healthy relationship with a grandmother. Interesting take on similar things, I actually kind of liked this one more in a lot of ways, even if only because of the cast of characters that I actually got a little attached to by the end of the movie.

kerboom!

Live Free or Die Hard, with Bruce Willis and Justin Long. Also, Maggie Q, rowr, and what I swear is a very famous traceur, though for the life of me I can't remember his name. Ah ha! Here we are, just had to look him up in Banlieue 13 - Cyril Raffaelli. Basically, a little over two hours of non-stop action. Which, at first thought, I found kind of disappointing, in the corresponding lack of character development and plot - but, as was quickly pointed out to me, who the hell cares? Stuff was blowing up! And this is true. Also, and more interestingly to me (besides the hilarious Kevin Smith cameos) was Raffaelli and the showcasing of his parkour skills at two points in the movie - inspiring! Though, I have to note, I think it'll be darkly funny if people don't believe a human body can do that, and yet believe some of the other, more implausible stunts could happen that easily. And, if anyone knows the name of the girl band playing when Long's character is introduced, I will kiss you. Nevermind, no kisses, I think I found it. Now, if anyone wants to get me a cd, before I do, anyway...

Transformers, with Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox. Hey, this one had parkour, too! Well, robot parkour, anyway. Still, it seems to be becoming a definite staple of action movies, which I am quite fine with. I was a bit leary of saying I liked this movie as well, in this case because of the bits that made it seem more like a kiddy-movie than not, but hell those weren't near enough to bring down the rest. I guess my first impulse was to want them to go all the way in making it more 'edgy,' but compromise is needed, I suppose, to appeal to all audiences. Ginormous, blockbuster, massive budget robot fun. Well played, Michael Bay...for once.

practical. creepy. violent. a trifecta, except not.

On Writing, by Stephen King. Wow. If I had ever been an English teacher, or ever go on to teach English, I'm all over this book. It is single-handedly more practically useful and on top of that more interesting than any fiction-writing class I had in school. The first section is kind of a portrait of the writer as a young man, as it were, which is engaging and illuminating both; the latter half of the book is about the actual nuts and bolts of writing. Which is a far cry from the oft-repeated "we can't really teach you how to write" that was heard in school; but hell, they could have supplied the toolbox worth of advice and common sense that King offers. Ah well. Anyway, some really great stuff for anyone interested in writing; bonus trivia, there's even part of a first draft of 1408, with King's corresponding revising notes scanned over it.

1408, with John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson. Pretty solidly good horror. Though I still haven't figured out why they cast Jackson as the hotel manager, considering the completely opposite character in the corresponding short story the movie is based on; I guess maybe just for star power? Anyway, not really a jump in your face an scare you movie, but more old-school mess with your psyche horror. I enjoyed what they added to the story to make it more film-friendly, and though a couple of the special effects suddenly made me feel like I was watching an amusement park ride, generally it was fine - and that said, the subtle, regular old creepy-camera-angles did a lot of the legwork. Even had an ending that left me with goosebumps, which is pretty awesome, considering most horror endings these days. I'll note the random little thing I noticed wherein anytime Cusack's character hit anything while freaking out or angry, he had great martial form - I mean, what regular schmuck kicks a wall in general with a tight back-kick, or hits the door with a cutting elbow? Also, they still snuck something of a Dark Tower reference in there, I wonder if anyone else read the detail as such.

Reservoir Dogs, with, well, several now-famous actors. Like 1408, this mostly takes place within a single room; it also shares some of those unorthodox camera angles and tracking. And, that's the end of my conferral of the two films, I haven't really thought that out. Anyway, one thing I find really interesting about this iconic movie, besides the iconic images contained within, is that the main action and impetus of the story is never actually seen by the audience. What we see is purely what happened before and after the attempted robbery catastrophe, and I think that that frees up the narrative for its jumping around in the timeline. Instead of building up to what would have otherwise been the climax of the movie, the shootout at the jewelry store, the introduction and denouement become the substance of the story. Interesting! Abrupt ending, though.

Things of Note - A...Hm...Weekend. Yes.

-yeah, really couldn't think of any descriptor there, and "varied" seemed boring
-I now have a Sam's Club card...and look like a doof in the grainy little photo
-after a trip to Summit Hutt, I'm thinking about taking up backpacking, or "humping it," if you will
-tuna and bacon? well, they don't really add to one another, but it kind of works
-LG...everywhere....
-dags and bur! and light-schwartzes
-a deceptively simple game, just red or black, and a thin line between awesome and not
-yay very generous, housebound old women - now, we just have to hope their children don't think Kim is conning them or something
-yay Corinne's art show! and yes, sell the totes!

booty - 'boot-ay' - (noun)

Copied from an email response to Mr Andrew-

The proper booty, you see, or 'bootay' if you will has just the ratio between muscle and cushion. Enough muscle is important in that that it is firm and juicy, yet just enough cushion all the same that there is a bit of feminine 'give' (sometimes known as more cushion for the pushin'), or jelly, for a sexy jiggle. But! One must be careful that there is not too much on the cushion side of the ratio, as we all know what that leads to; both aspects, of course, also contribute to the keystone of the matter, shapeliness. Thus, we have the perfectly smackable, grab-able, push-able (as it were) booty. One might note as a postscript that it doesn't matter whether a gal is slender or more curvy, as both can interestingly have that shapely tush.

Verily: meowmeows and dizzawgs

The Truth About Cats and Dogs, with Uma Thurman and Janeane Garofalo. Interesting! Like The Sure Thing, it's not really an average romantic comedy, but this is being approached from a different path entirely, that is, the riff on Cyrano de Bergerac path. Heh, which I was slow enough not to realize till I read that in text. Much to my chagrin. It's interesting in that the genders are reversed, which has some interesting effects (though I'm still not quite understanding why Garofalo later 'disowned' the movie on the grounds of it being anti-feminist, but I'm working at that).

One is that where ye olden Cyrano is quite apparently physically unattractive on account of his big schnoz (though wow, I never thought of that in phallic terms...whoa), Garofalo is actually quite attractive. It would have been interesting, certainly, for her to have been made physically unattractive, and much more true to the point of the story, but I just don't think it would have panned out with audiences (and now I start to see Garofalo's issue). Two, and building on that issue, is Thurman's character's sweet-but-dumb characteristic - that is, her own self-doubt is interestingly developed, but the horribly unfortunate aspect of that is that it is never really rectified. She just accepts the fact of 'being stupid,' and in a sense, her character is subtly almost tragic in that way, almost more than how Christian dies uselessly in the original play. Anyhoo, I could go on, I'll stop there.

Chris: King of River Shotgunning

The Sure Thing, with John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga. Pretty laugh out loud funny, I have to say. I think a couple things are interesting about this movie that elevate above a general romantic comedy. One, I was initially puzzled by Cusack's character, as he seemed something of a dick; but as the character progressed through the movie (and his own development), the more Cusack-esque character aspects shined through. So, in a sense, it wasn't just a growing-up thread, but a growing-up-into-a-Cusack-character thread. And fans of the actor will know what I'm talking about, I think. And in that, except for the cardboard cutouts of the pretty girl and the plaid boyfriend at the end, lies the other interesting thing, that at least the two main characters have a good bit more depth to them, and if one wants to argue that, at least an earnestness to them that is lacking in a lot of romcoms. Take the ending, say - there's no deus ex machina nor is there a spectacular save-the-day, but rather, the boy in question didn't do something, and then exerts his creativity in an understated manner to simply give the girl an opening. Nice, and in relative terms, subtle. And furthermore! The two characters meet halfway by the end of the movie, neither really sacrificing, and both gaining. Well played, movie. Well played.

Things of Note - A Lemony Weekend

-since when do people race on the upper roads of Mt Lemmon at two in the morning? What the hell was that about?
-we don't need no steenking hot dogs!
-double pirouettes while staring at stars: the new drunk test...just don't fall over while doing the prep
-yay Wyatt's lantern and other camping stuff, without which we might have been somewhat screwed!
-everyone freeze when the dogs start sprinting (though it would be pretty funny to see someone just get taken out)
-what was with that woman's eye? Was she just messing with us, or did she have an actual twitch?
-
-I bet this could totally be turned into all sorts of scifi-fantasy stories (I'm thinking bouyant plants that somehow float into the air, say, or some outerspace variation...)

Things of Note - A Real Rollercoaster of a Weekend

-Wienersnitchzel...I have no idea if I spelled that right....wow, I really didn't...is pretty good; I'd just been put off by a bad college experience (slash, it was funny in retrospect)
-I just learned that wiener schnitzel actually has nothing to do with what that restaurant sells
-we watched plenty of rom-com this weekend
-Kim's sister can rock "I Will Survive" in karaoke
-would someone please tell Kevin and I where we know those incredibly familiar girls from?
-yay Bobo's! slash, the M word
-why is there such stubborness about this TV issue?
-alternating between The Simple Life and The Sixth Sense is kind of funny

Post-Collapse-Week TriviaBall

I think this is great idea, especially in the aikido principle of meeting a person where they're at - blending - in order to really connect with them, and in this case, resolve an issue

Who knew little blocks could turn creepy? Slash, do they still sell legos, even?

As much as these illusions (most of which are interactive!) are fun, they also play into stuff I've been going through lately, in that it's funny how what we think might be absolutely true absolutely isn't, with even a slight tweak of perspective and interpretation

From Ms Xuemei, a very funny geographical progression

Two thoughts: one, I didn't realize she was pretty hot...two, I'll give her points for pulling off a one-woman show this way

pretty action and not-pretty action

Appurushîdo, with many Japanese voices, because I refuse to listen to the English voice-track. Wait, hang on, I'm still giggling at remembering them saying the title during the movie....Appuuurushiiiido. Ahem. Okay, I'm done. From the start, there's gorgeous, original action sequences, with a pretty rocking techno soundtrack. The setting seems interesting, though I wish they would have expanded it a little more; not because the story needed it, I don't think, but just because I was left wondering what the rest of the world besides the one city was like. There's a full bevy of science-fiction concepts to think about (I suddenly wonder how much a bevy is), but that doesn't save a kind of oddly paced plot and and stumbly ending. If you need some eye-candy action, it's cool, though. Heh, apuuruushiido.
-oh, I guess I should note, that's an Engrishing of 'appleseed'

Platoon, with Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen. Platoon is famous, and with reason - it's a damn good movie. Just not a happy one. I can't really point to any flaws in it on a first viewing, but I'll just note a random trivial thing (or maybe not trivial?) - did anyone else notice any homoerotic undertones in the underground-smoking-scene? Actually, wait, I will note that reading a book on alleviating depression, with all its positive and idealistic aspects, is quite an odd contrast to watching this movie - that is, I couldn't fathom how the poor soldiers could be helped, in the midst of the situations they were in. Except, perhaps, in Dafoe's character, who maintained some level of compassion and idealism, somehow.

Things of Note - Almost Monsoon? A Weekend.

-has anyone else ever noticed that Bookman's has a "Pornoire" in the corner? Is anyone else kind of curious what's in there?
-funny how playing a video game can be stressful enough that it can make its own good point about how horrible war is; if the game can be that anxiety-inducing, yeesh....
-and was Bookman's always that busy on Sundays?
-I got my car washed. Then a bird shat upon it.
-financial director: wow, unexpectedly wolf-whistle gorgeous
-the semi-legendary Wierd Plant Sale pretty much turned out to be a succulent/desert plant sale...still, they had a few odd succulents, I guess, but pretty much all succulents are a bit odd
-and were Friday nights always Mexican family night at Hollywood Video?

-a tour of Dante's Inferno, I love the interface

ker-bang!

Shooter, by Gunnery Sergeant Jack Coughlin, Captain Casey Kuhlman, and Donald Davis. If you're interested in military-history books, this is pretty much about as close to a 'current-events' version as one might find. I found especially interesting the manner of Coughlin's formation of the concept of the mobile sniper team, and wish there was a way to see if that really bloomed after the initial fighting in Iraq. That was also another interesting aspect of the book, that is, getting a nicely paced and described first-hand view of the beginning of that recent war, from pre-deployment through the final assault, and all the attendent feelings and aspects of the in-between, as well. All in all, just chock full of interesting stuff, and with a pace that gets you hooked.

Determine your ayurvedic constitution (but what the hell does it mean when whenever I try to do this, I'm almost exactly even across all three variants - am I balanced, then, or just...flat?)

Babies and other oddities

Knocked Up, with Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl. Very funny, and yet, very sobering, especially to watch while sitting next to your girlfriend. I think it struck a pretty solid balance between those two aspects, though, without becoming saccharine or stupid. Well done, I say! The other interesting thing I thought was nicely done was the spacing out of events over a nine month period, and furthermore, the interesting cast of supporting characters. And they showed way more of the birth than I expected, that was pretty interesting. And from now on, it doesn't matter what role he's in, I'm going to giggle at that actor from Firefly, purely because he was in Firefly, so I'm just going to imagine it's that character pretending to be another person.

Hm. I think I'll hold off on explaining why my thesis advisor once gave a forty-five minute lecture on his theory that babies are ontologically creepy.

On strange, strange animals: a turtle (sort of)

Slash, I suddenly feel odd about eating escargot, which I sometimes get a craving for

mmm, boys...

As much as I know I'll get the usual jibe from Ms Kim for that title, we sure are excited that The Boys is back in print, aren't we, Mme Penguin? In other news, we naturally have the next volume of Empowered on pre-order: also sexy. Just like you, Mme Penguin. Ker-wink.

Anyway! X-Men 199 kicked some ass, using Bachalo's loose art to its best effect to portray the desperate fight against the Hecatomb. And man, is that some crazy action - and with a crazy creepy ending, to boot, with Rogue's power changing to a scary extreme. Damnation Crusade 4, on the other hand, continues to be an interesting snapshot of the 40k setting, but where the hell are the plot and characters? As much as it's a great author writing it, it just seems like some loosely connected scenes thrown together. For another turnaround, however, we have Gutsville 1 - a Puritan town constructed quite literally in the belly of a gigantic sea creature, it's hard sci-fantasy at its setting-centric best! Yay indie-comic high-five, Mme Penguin! But, another somewhat downturn, Fallen Son: Captain America, which is supposed to represent bargaining in the stages of grief, was mildly interesting in its exposition of Hawkeye, but...yeah, we'll go with mildly interesting. But, to end on a higher note, Nova 2 was something of a set-up issue, but how fun will Nova versus the Thunderbolts be in the next? Fun, slash, very fun, is the answer.