BunkBlog

Sinfest

You think he meant for this to be dirty?

Talk Soup, now called The Soup, is back! Oh, the snarky goodness… And it’s an hour before The Daily Show, so it’s a double dose of smartass!

I’m amused by this. I consider it the Frequent Fuckers Card, though. Buy six Viagra pills, get the seventh one free. Guys getting a stack of like 10 of these cards, just for bragging rights…

The movies for today were Dark City and Solaris (new version). Dark City was dark. Go figure. It reminded me of Metropolis and Blade Runner, in the stygian depths of the city as well as the anachronistic set design. Why do so many movies set in the future make everyone and everything look like it belongs in 1947? At least Dark City explained why. Good movie, if you are into mind-bending science fiction mystery movies. Great movie, if you are into great set design and cinematography.

Solaris, on the other hand, tries to be mind-bending but ends up telegraphing every move a mile ahead. I’ve not read the Lem book on which it’s based, but I’m betting it’s not as simple as the movie. Clooney’s wife is dead, he goes to a magical planet and his wife appears with no memory except of him. Anyone else see that she is a physical figment of his imagination? Maybe the planet made her. Ya think? The cinematography is fantastic in Solaris, as well, but the story is just a little flat.

Neither of these movies, despite being science fiction, had much in the way of special effects. The planet in Solaris was supposed to be impressive, but it just looked like a plasma lamp to me. The morphing city in Dark City was very cool, though.

This afternoon’s film was The Dreamers, a film by Bernardo Bertolucci that didn’t have subtitles. It’s Bertolucci’s homage to the New Wave of French cinema, and boy does it show. It’s got sex, smoking, incest, smoking, Chairman Mao, firebombs, movies, riots, smoking, drinking, and sex. Holy crap was there a lot of smoking. Set in 1968, this is hardly surprising I guess; still, lots of smoking.

It was a film filled with a great deal of fantastic imagery, wonderful music, and the kind of dialog you wish you participated in during real life. Wonderfully hallucinogenic movie, but it seemed to have an unfinished ending.

Oh, and for the women – there’s male full-frontal nudity. Explains the NC17 rating.

Since I’ve got nothing better to do than hang around and watch DVDs while the tile dudes are putting together the kitchen, that’s what I’m doing. This morning was Mystic River. There’s a messed up movie. (spoilers after the cut)
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Came up with another new design for the shops – Some mornings it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps. I think it’s funny.

This version of Snake is just way too addictive. Bad, crack-like game.

Went to go see The Bourne Supremacy today, after mowing the lawn and doing laundry (I’m not a complete “bear with furniture”). I should know better than to see a movie on opening weekend at 4 pm. *Packed* theater, just packed.

Could they have used a steadicam once in a while in that movie? Geez, I thought cinema verite had died out years ago. With that aside, though, it was a really good movie. Not as good as the first one, but pretty darned good. I think it taps into the rugged individualist streak in the western psyche – we think one man with the right training can do anything, beat anyone. It sure makes for good film, anyway.

Not only did Jessica Simpson have to savage the old Berlin track “Take My Breath Away” but now she’s taken on the more-obscure Robbie Williams song “Angels” – to the detriment of the song, of course. What in the world is a damned *orchestra* doing in that lowkey song? Bizarre.

Flipping through channels, I hear an old Go-Gos song, “Our Lips Are Sealed” but it’s not quite right. Yep, Hilary Duff has remade it. What the hell? What lack of writing has hit the Top 40 music scene? Sadly, most of the target audience doesn’t even know these songs are covers.

I know that covers have been done forever, but listen to a Top 40 (or “best variety”) station for a day and you’ll hear No Doubt covering a Talk Talk song, Hilary Duff doing the Go-Gos, Jessica Simpson doing Robbie Williams *and* Berlin, and 311 covering the Cure. That last one is really inexplicable, because it sounds like the same song with the same musicians but a weak singer. Like Karaoke gone bad. Wait, that’s redundant.

I’m not old, dammit!

Got a cool error from the military proxy server today:

bq. explicitly denied. Reason: art/culture

Yeah, we don’t want any of that art and culture junk to get on-base!

Jon Stewart is hilarious. My favorite quote from this piece about Saddam’s hatred of the U.S.:

bq. Democrats – always standing up for what they later realize they should have believed in.

Went to see I, Robot today. Yeah, um…it’s not very Asimov is it?

Spoilers ahead. OK, maybe not really big spoilers, but I will be speaking in sweeping generalizations that will expose some of the story, especially if you are as insanely well-versed in Asimov as I am…
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Disney is counterattacking Michael Moore, releasing a movie which is about one degree removed from being a campaign film for the incumbent.

bq. Telephone callers to its advance ticket sales office may order a free bible study guide designed to go with the film.

A patriotic movie with a bible study guide? Does our devotion to the country really depend on one religion? I guess those Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and others just don’t get to be as patriotic as the Christians.

I added a pair of Size Matters stores to my Cafepress pantheon. Not that I actually sell anything, but it amuses me that such items exist. Don’t forget my other designs:
What Would Cthulhu Do?
I’m not wearing any pants (inspired by )
Army Girl
Sassy Bitch
Ninja
Eat Me
Get Odd
Mess With Texas

Music Legend and Pioneer, Ray Charles, Succumbs at Age 73

Go buy the album, Genius Loves Company, when it comes out.

According to CNet, music labels are trying to dampen CD burning yet again. So far, this has never worked. Every method of copy protection fails. This is especially true of audio CDs, because you have to be able to *hear* them for it to make any sense to buy them. Since anything you can hear can be copied, any copy protection of audio (or video) is doomed to failure.

I would think this would be obvious, but apparently it’s not to the music and movie industries, who think fighting with and suing their customers is a good business idea.

In the last two days, approximately seven million flies have appeared on our dining room floor. They seem to have come out of nowhere to die in our house. I believe that it is all part of an insectoid suicide pact. I picture a tiny messianic figure and itty bitty barrels of koolaid.

Holly has been taunted and harassed by the blue jays who are living in our pecan tree. They dive at her, and she thinks she can catch them. She has a very small brain.

My cow-orkers tend to say some absurd things that they think make sense. Here are a couple from this week.

“I’m ok with Word until you get into the advanced features. How do you delete a page break?” Um, yeah. That’s not really advanced so much as it is blatantly obvious. DELETE key ring a bell?

“I don’t run an antivirus because it would be a step backward for me. As a programmer, I know how things propagate and I’ve got a good router.” Sure you do. The magical kind of router that is not only a stateful packet sniffer but stops trojan horses and updates itself automatically to prevent file corruption on all computers attached to it. Fantastic technology.