Month: February 2007

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Sunday Burst of Delusion

Rumsfeld-Bolton in 2008.

The money quote:

Rather than running away from this record, how about running on it? How about trumpeting the military success of the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and highlighting the need for inter-agency reform to offset the problems we have encountered in reconstruction?

The war was a military success, and everything that’s happened since has been “reconstruction”.

This is like saying that the Buffalo Bills won Super Bowl XXV because they led at halftime, and just ran into a few problems running out the clock.

(via)

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Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Hoo-boy….

:: How to draw Dick Cheney.

First Step: Draw Dick Cheney. Yah, I know that’s a bit of a leap, I remember my old “how to draw superheroes” books where the first step would be a box, and the second step would be Captain America.

Of course, my visual arts mojo is such that drawing the box would trip me up.

:: Move over Pauline Kael! An AICN persona reviews the new movie 300:

I can’t spoil the plot because THANK GOD THERE ISN’T ONE. Just ass kicking that kicks ass that, while said ass is getting kicked, is kicking yet more ass that’s hitting someone’s balls with a hammer made of ice but the ice is frozen whiskey.

Ummm…OK then.

:: A dead whale carcass washes up on a beach in South Africa; South African police tow the carcass out to the waters off a place called Seal Island. I don’t know anything about Seal Island, but I can only assume that it’s called Seal Island by virtue of being home to lots of seals. And we all know what beasties love to munch on seals, right? Yup, sharks. Lots of sharks. Lots of Great White sharks. Who now have a nice big rotting whale carcass to nibble at. And by “nibble”, I mean, “take big honking bites out of”.

Here’s the nearly seven-minute video of the feeding frenzy. It’s pretty grisly stuff, as you might surmise, so keep that in mind, all ye queasy creatures out there. But it’s worth watching in that “Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom” way that always fascinated when the lion ran down the wounded gazelle…and that’s all before the guy in scuba gear goes into the water to get a better look.

And what do you suppose happens when a bunch of boy sharks and girl sharks get together and fill their bellies? Well, their thoughts may well turn to thoughts of, well, doin’ the underwater grind. A scientist hypothesizes that dead whale carcasses may well be essential to the continuation of the Great White species, by providing the opportunity for full-stomached shark orgies.

This is officially the greatest thing ever posted to YouTube, and quite possibly the entire Interweb. Icky dead things being fed upon by ravenous sharks, followed by scuba diving bravado, followed by the making of little sharks? I honestly can’t think of a way for this to get any better, unless it would be for one of the scientists to get up the next morning, when the carcass has been reduced to just chunks of internal organs held together mostly by gristle, and climb onto the carcass in an attempt to get even closer footage of sharks feeding….

Seriously, greatest thing on teh Internets EVER.

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A reminder!

In honor of this blog’s fast-approaching (this coming Thursday!) five-year blogiversary, I’m doing Round Two of Ask Me Anything!. Details here. (Anonymous questions are fine, although nothing…dirty. This blog is PG-13 at worst!)

Oh, and there’s no limit on questions, either. Ask one or ten, if you must.

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Geek Movies!

Via Jason Bennion I see a list of Fifteen geek movies to see before you die. Which ones have I seen? The ones in bold, of course:

Brazil (I can only count this by virtue of equating “seen” with “having been in the same room when it was on”. It was so long ago that I remember nothing from the movie. In fact, I may even be thinking of the wrong movie entirely. So on second thought, scratch that.)

The Matrix (Loved it when it came out. I liked it a little less every time I watched it afterwards. I got the second one from the library a while back, and I actually fell asleep in the first half hour, and it wasn’t one of those nights when I had gone to work at 5:00 a.m., either. I’ve never looked back, either. For additional hatin’ on The Matrix, check out 50 reasons to reject The Matrix, which includes the following:

You’ve worked as a policeman your whole life, protecting the innocent, enforcing the law. You retire with honors, then take a job as a security guard, working the metal detector on the ground floor of a skyscraper in order to help pay for your wife’s arthritis medication. You’re sitting there, on a slow day, reading your newspaper, when a girl walks in wearing a trenchcoat. She issues no demands, no warnings, no “freeze” or “drop your gun.” She just tears you in half with a spray of machine-gun fire, then does cartwheels along the walls while killing all your friends.

The Fifth Element (Good movie, but man, is it weird. And I’ve never understood people who insist that this movie is a great work of genius, with that unimaginably irritating character in it, and yet also tell me that Jar Jar Binks is too evil to let stand.)

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (I suppose, but I still think it’s overrated. But hey, KHAAAANNN!)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Good movie and all, but is it really indispensible geek viewing? Really?)

Serenity (Out of purism, I won’t watch this until I’ve seen all of Firefly. I know they say you don’t have to have seen the show to grok the movie, but I’m gonna do it right.)

Dark City

12 Monkeys (I liked it a lot. But I have to be in a special mood for Terry Gilliam. Same as I have to be in a special mood for Wild Turkey jello shots.)

Shaun of the Dead (You know, I like reading horror, but I’m not a great fan of movie horror.)

Darkman (Wow! One of the funnest nights ever in college involved this movie. We did one of our “Three movies and a bunch of beers” nights, and this one was the second movie. Most times the second movie ended up being the most fun, since that movie always occupied the “sweet spot” when we’d consumed enough beer to understand the plot and still laugh uproariously at horribly inappropriate stuff, like when the bad guy chastises an underling by cutting off his fingers with a cigar clipper, or when the hero coerces a baddie to give him information under threat of death — and then proceeds to kill the guy anyway. “Wait! I told you what I knew!” “I know you did — but let’s pretend you didn’t!” Oh, and Liam Neeson rocks.)

Army of Darkness

War Games (Incidentally, this was the last time I liked Matthew Broderick in anything. And even then I didn’t like him that much. A nerd like that, going out with Ally Sheedy? GAHHH!)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Well, duh! And check out the complete script, which includes a lot of different stuff from what actually ended up in the finished movie. For instance, here’s a bit that would have taken place just after the Bridge of Death, when Arthur and Bedevere are coming to the boat that will take them to the Castle Aggghhhhh:

Suddenly the air is filled with ethereal music, and out of the mist appears a wonderful barge silently and slowly drifting towards them. They gaze in wonder. The mysterious boat comes to where they are standing. As if bewitched, they find themselves drawing closer to the boat. As they are about to step in, a ragged figure looks up at them.

BOATKEEPER: (he is the same as the BRIDGEKEEPER and the SOOTHSAYER) He who would cross the Sea if Fate, must answer me these questions twenty-eight.

He fixes them with a baleful eye, ARTHUR and BEDEVERE exchange glances, then turn, with minds made up, pick him up bodily and throw him in the water. They climb into the boat and the boat moves off into the mist

Ni!)

Office Space (They said I could keep my radio at a reasonable volume.)

Repo Man (I don’t know the first thing about this movie!)

Jason points out a number of movies that could also be considered “Essential Geek viewing”; I’d add The Abyss and Superman to the list. Another? Well, it’s not a SF or horror flick, but neither is Office Space, and I’ve never met a single person that I held to be a Geek in Good Standing who hadn’t seen The Karate Kid.

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All those two had was EACH OTHER!

John’s got a brief post in which he describes a TV show moment that makes him cry. Since I myself have been known to blubber like a baby at certain movies and TV shows, I figure, why not make a list of such moments? (It’s not like this is a masculine blog or anything; I mean, geez, look at the picture at the top!)

:: Titanic. OK, I never found this movie to be the overwhelming emotional experience that many folks did, and Jack’s frigid and wet demise never made me tear up at all, but that brief bit where the mother in steerage is telling her two kids their last bedtime story before the waters swirl around them, and then the moment just after that when the elderly first-class couple is on their bed for the last time, always gets me. (Yes, I still like Titanic. I’ve never seen so befuddling an example of something so universally beloved at one point becoming so universally loathed a bit later on.)

:: Field of Dreams. When the catcher removes his mask, and Ray Kinsella realizes just who he is and just why he’s been doing all this weird stuff — oh, crap, where’s my Kleenex?

:: Back when ER didn’t suck, it could usually be counted on to have one big tear-jerking scene per year. The “Love’s Labor Lost” episode (Dr. Greene saves the baby but the mom dies) was one such episode; then there was the second season episode when one of the two ambulance-driver dudes died of the burns he suffered in a fire. I always found the episode where Dr. Greene died overdone — it was like the producers were saying, “You will cry now. Cry, damn you! CRY!!!” — but the episode before that one really got me. That was when, at the beginning of the episode, Dr. Carter is reading a letter to the ER staff from Dr. Greene, and then at the bottom, he gets to the note that Elizabeth had added to the end: “Mark died this morning.” The rest of the episode tracks everyone’s reaction to the news, and it ends with a flash-forward by about six months or so — and the last letter of Dr. Greene is still pinned to the bulletin board.

:: OK, I gotta mention the Little House on the Prairie episode when Laura Ingalls gets jealous over the attention being paid to her baby brother, and prays for the baby to die, which he then does. And then Laura runs away from home and goes up on top of this really high mountain (an oddly high point, given that the Ingalls family is supposed to be living in the flatlands of Minnesota, but who cares), whereupon she meets an angel played by Ernest Borgnine. While Laura’s learning all kinds of wisdom from the angelic Borgnine, Pa and Mr. Edwards are frantically searching for her. Yes, it’s exactly as maudlin as it sounds, but that moment at the end when Pa finally arrives…and then Laura turns to introduce her new friend, but he isn’t there…shit, I need more Kleenex.

:: The West Wing: when Aaron Sorkin was really on top of his shit, he could get me like nobody else. The opening minutes of the second-season premier, “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen”, gets me every time, when Toby starts speaking to Josh and then realizes he’s bleeding profusely from his gunshot wounds. “Two Cathedrals” is a tough one, too, as Jed Bartlet comes to grips with Mrs. Landingham’s death and his big MS problem. But nothing got me quite as much as the scene in “25”, Aaron Sorkin’s last episode of the show, when Toby spoke to his newly-born twins.

:: I don’t recall actually tearing up during the second half of Star Wars Episode III, but I definitely felt like I’d been punched in the gut as Anakin’s betrayal of the Jedi starts to play out. The look on Plo Koon’s face as he realizes that the clone troopers are now training their blasters on him is devastating.

:: The Shawshank Redemption: “I hope the Pacific is as blue as it is in my dreams…I hope.” Wow.

OK, that’s about it. I could go on, though.

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Gratitude

I’d like to thank everyone who has either commented here, or on their own blogs, or both, for the well-wishes after my story was published in the Buffalo News yesterday. All that meant as much to me, if not more, than getting printed in the first place!

Regular posting may resume later today.

UPDATE: I’m keeping this post at the top of today’s entries, for people who may be jumping on the blog for the first time. Newer posts appear below.

UPDATE II: I’ve been remiss in mentioning the second-place winning story, “The Color of Dreams”, by Buffalo area teacher Jennifer Cantie. I found it a fine effort, even if she got Ernest and Hilda completely wrong! Check it out. Congratulations to Mrs. Cantie.

UPDATE III: I have a friend who occasionally morphs photos of me into…other photos of me. Here’s what he did to the author shot that appeared with my story:

Lurking…always lurking….

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Dispatches from the Boston PD

A press item, noted today:

BOSTON — Still smarting from their recent partial shutdown of the city, which was perceived nationwide as a staggering overreaction to what was later uncovered as a viral marketing ploy, the Boston Police Department is now facing questions about its conduct in investigating another bomb scare last month.

“There was clearly intent to harm civilians,” said Detective Duncan Shaun O’Reillyhughe the Third. “The surveillance tape clearly shows the suspect wiring a piano to explode with ten sticks of Grade A dynamite from the ‘ACME’ corporation.”

The scheme, as explained by Detective O’Reillyhughe, was for the bomber’s quarry to approach the piano and plink out the tune written out on the manuscript paper on the instrument’s sheet-music holder. The tune, as identified via surveillance tapes of the scene, was ‘Believe Me If All These Endearing Young Charms’. The dynamite was wired to the ‘C’ key one octave above middle-C, with the expectation that the bomber’s quarry would hit that note and then be destroyed in the explosion.

Fortunately, the bomber’s quarry proved to be a poor musician, and repeatedly struck the tones to either side of the high-C, eventually prompting the bomber — a short man with red hair, beard and mustache, and tall cowboy hat — to come to the keyboard himself to demonstrate. Surprisingly, in the resulting explosion, the bomber was unhurt save for the singing of his hat and facial hair. His quarry, who was dressed as a rabbit, escaped unharmed.

Boston police acted on a tip about a man matching the bomber’s description, going from bar to bar in the downtown area demanding to know if anyone had seen a “flea-bitten varmint”. When police arrived on the scene, the bomber ran from them, shouting that “no lawman would ever catch him”. Police then gave chase, Detective O’Reillyhughe said.

Accounts from here differ as to what happened next. According to Detective O’Reillyhughe, the official police report states that the piano bombing suspect ran down a dead-end alley, but when pursuing officers arrived, the suspect was gone. However, a homeless man who was sleeping in that alley says that the suspect was able to escape by hastily painting a tunnel onto the wall and then escaping into it. The pursuing officers attempted to give chase into the painted tunnel, only to be forced to evacuate when a light therein indicated an oncoming train.

“These two individuals, the bomber and the unidentified ‘varmint’, are highly dangerous,” Detective O’Reillyhughe said in his statement. “We are releasing their photo, taken from the surveillance cameras on the scene of the piano bombing, in hopes that someone in Boston will recognize them.”

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Oh yeah, that was this weekend, wasn’t it?

I just realized that I haven’t yet mentioned the Super Bowl in this space, so just a few thoughts:

:: Lots of folks left due to the rain, which meant that by the middle of the third quarter, Dolphins Stadium looked about like it always does for regular season Dolphins home games.

:: Worst halftime show ever? Nope — I still remember the Michael Jackson one at Super Bowl XXVII, and the “Rockin’ to the Oldies in 3D” thing they had for Super Bowl XXIII (you had to get the 3D glassed out of TVGuide or something like that).

:: Commercials: I don’t watch them much, really. During Super Bowls, I use commercials for their intended purpose (to go to the bathroom, get more chips, refill my glass, et cetera). There was one with a couple of gorillas that was mildly amusing.

:: Is the NFL trying to raise the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the status of the Stanley Cup or something? This business of having it marched in to a giant trumpet fanfare at the end of the game is just weird.

:: Why the Bears Lost, in a nutshell: despite the game being close for most of the way, they ran the ball less than half as many times as the Colts did. Sure, Grossman’s picks didn’t help, but surely rushing the ball more would have helped keep Peyton Manning off the field.

:: The whole game was weird, between the opening kickoff return, the constant turnovers, the rain and whatnot. Even though the score at halftime was only 16-14, the guys on CBS were saying things like “If Chicago’s gonna get back in this game, they gotta…” That struck me as an odd way to put it when the differential in the score was only two points, but it was true: this game was either the closest blowout I’ve ever seen, or the most lopsided close game I’ve ever seen.

:: One final shot at the New England franchise: surely we can stipulate that losing the Super Bowl is several orders of magnitude more disappointing than losing the conference championship game. And yet, compare and contrast the behavior of Lovie Smith and Rex Grossman after the Super Bowl with that of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady after the AFC Championship.

And now, into the offseason we ride. Go Sabres!

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