blog for blog’s sake
Man, Dr. Bombay pointed me over here today, and I’ve been struggling to stay on task ever since! Basically, the UofMN is offering up movable type to all its students and staff… I’m excited to watch as their blog directory expands.
From there, I surfed around, added at least one new blog to my list to read, and read this amazing blog post on google over at another new (to me) blog that I’ve added to my list to read regularly.
Who has time for all this!?!
Tonight I saw Envy, the new Jack Black/Ben Stiller movie with Dr.Bombay. It was great. Don’t let the (supposed) reviewers tell you otherwise! Maybe a little Hollywood and predictable, but otherwise, great. Christopher Walken stole most of the scenes he was in. He had some really great lines.
When I got home, it was the first family gathering with all of us at it in at least a couple months. Dan just got back from Florida (he was doing a renaissance festival down there) and John has been working till 9:30 on Thursdays, so we got together at 10-ish, because John is taking off for LA or something this coming monday. I think he’s going to be gone for a couple of weeks, and has an art show lined up while he’s there.
After most everybody left, John’s girlfriend (Katie) asked if I was going to see Pilobolus while they’re in town. They have a show tomorrow night and Saturday night at the Pantages theater downtown. I’m going to try and get a ticket for Saturday night, I think. You can supposedly get $5 off if you mention Minneapolis Happy Hour.
Man, this is banal.
The last couple of nights I’ve been up late, surfing this forum… I don’t think I’m going to post a link to it, but if you really want to know, I’ll probably tell you where it is…
Anyway, it feels a LOT like the old style BBSing I used to do… back in high school. There are all these “rooms” (forum topics) where people talk openly about different stuff… hiding behind their pseudo anonymity. I found myself in the “love” pages, reading forum after forum, and more than once opening up and really letting out some juicy bits–details of my life that I didn’t even know were bugging me. (or maybe aren’t bugging me, but were somehow rekindled by reading these posts.)
Anyway, as I’m doing this, as I’m typing furiously, and not editing, and really being uninhibited, (things I do not do here, generally speaking), and I realized that I could be writing blog entries… I mean, I could be, but I wasn’t. What’s the difference? Why not blog those things? I certainly have been as open and candid here before… and I certainly don’t feel inhibited… (although a while ago I think my mom may have let slip something that suggested she’s read some stuff here… and although I did just discover the blog of a friend I’ve written about here a couple of times… not from her telling me… but from a link on a mutual friend’s page… And that really doesn’t bug me at all, but I was just writing–over at this forum–about someone she knows who also used to be a friend… this stuck up bitch who I don’t think I would really ever want to read any of the stuff I just wrote over at the forum… not to mention stuff I write about her here.)
Man!!! and it’s stuff like that! Where I can’t even talk without being super vague! Is that how it has to be?
And here’s another thing. I’ve not talked about this before because Laura didn’t want me to say anything to Nate… but now it’s all out in the open anyway, so fuck it. Basically, laura is seeing this guy we all know. Who was dating this girl we all know. (Who had been dating nate, for like two years.) So now Laura is dating this guy, and he’s no longer dating the girl… and Nate and the girl are spending a lot of time together again. Everybody knows I really don’t like this girl all that much. There were times we’ve been cordial, and that’s about the best it’s ever been. She really grates on some nerve I have that hates all stuck up bitches (and no, that’s not a gender slam, guys can be stuck up bitches too). I get so cold and seething every time she’s around (and have for so long now) that I’m sure she also thinks I’m as much of a snob as she is. (without obviously thinking that she is… although who knows, as with the previously mentioned stuck up bitch, it’s entirely possible she gets off on it and thinks she’s a better person or something for it.)
Anyway, so I don’t know how I feel about Laura entangling herself in this whole situation. I know she likes this guy quite a bit… and I guess they have a lot in common… but he sorta ditched her once before when he started dating the other girl… which I felt was pretty shitty. (I guess they’ve talked about this, and it’s cool now, so whatever.) I guess I think what bugs me about it is twofold… first that Laura didn’t want me to tell nate in the first place, (presumably because they didn’t want either nate or girl x to freak out about it, which feels too much like hiding shit, and I’m not cool with that really under any circumstance–at least in a relationship context) and second that Laura seems really awkward when she’s talking about this guy. Sometimes she opens up, and we can discuss it ok, but whenever there is any tension between us at all, maybe I get paranoid, and I feel like she’s not telling me stuff.
Tonight John mentioned he’d seen her with him at the Wedge, and while I’m cool with that, and don’t really care if my family knows I have an open relationship, it sorta compounded also knowing that they had bumped into my sister and mom at John’s art show last saturday while I was out of town. (My sister said something cute like “Who’s this guy!?”)
Maybe I’m just pissed because it’s 12:30 and I’m horny as hell and don’t know when Laura’s going to get home. I think I have a problem about getting pissed off when I’m horny and Laura isn’t around or isn’t interested. Obviously this is not her fault, and she should feel no obligation to do anything about it, but some part of me really wants her to be concerned and rush to “help out”. I think it’s mostly because I feel like I would rush to her “aid” if I knew she were horny, even if I wasn’t. But I can’t ever remember that having been the case, so maybe I’m exaggerating. I think I’ve even posted about this before… I wonder if I can track down that entry…
Wow… I didn’t find it, but surfing around on some other blogs, I just found this link to an awesome animation of scale. (link via scattershot) Scattershot is also hosting this fucking amazing guy playing the super mario theme song on his electric guitaur. I’m going to bed now. Maybe I will dream I am as cool as he is.
My cat has a shoe fetish;
he likes to dig his paws into them,
roll them around, and
roll around on them.
I thought it was that
they’re like little gopher holes
or caves or something,
until I saw him playing with sandals
chewing on the straps and
burying his nose in the toe part.
Is it the smell?
Perhaps the taste of sweat,
so uniquely ours
that he enjoys?
My cat has a shoe fetish,
and he’ll put his toys in them
like presents for us to discover
when we leave the house.
Last night I watched the Hero DVD I bought off ebay last week. I invited a few people over to watch it, but by the time they all got there, Nate was playing DDR in the living room, so a few of them did that, while I finished up a puzzle in the kitchen with Keith and Mike. It got to be 11, and everybody had to get up early, so they all left me to watch it by myself.
The movie feels a lot like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It doesn’t have quite the emotional impact of Crouching Tiger, but the cinematography and visuals are at least as good if not better. Also, I think there may be more/better fight scenes overall (a few more viewings are needed to make that judgement, however). Anyway, the fight scenes were very well done. Hell, everything about the movie was well done.
I posted a pic of the import dvd cover over on the moblog.
Today’s other news is that I picked up my listener appreciation gift for buying 25 watts from RadioK this morning. (Also wrote them a rather fat check while I was there–each watt is $10, you do the math.) Anyway, 25 watts was the only way I could get the complete first year of Some Assembly Required on CD. (I called and asked, believe me.) Seeing as how it’s the only radio show I really try to catch, and also seeing as how I basically almost never do, I figured it was worth the money–plus it’s a really good cause in general.
Cool link of the day: This Flash movie illustrating a song made entirely in windows SNDREC32.EXE. It’s a pretty sweet song actually, and worth listening to.
Tonight I downloaded Ben Harper live singing Sexual Healing. It’s an awesome rendition, and it reminded me of his live “Waiting on an Angel” from the old REV 105 Archive album. Now I’m going to have to make a live Ben Harper mix. He has a version of “Walk Away” on one of the cities 97 samplers. I’m sure I can dig up some others.
So I had this idea. I was going to write an article for alistapart.com. I love A List Apart. Everyone who works in my industry should read it regularly. Including me. I got all excited because I had this idea that I could write an article about how content management systems are so clearly the wave of the future, but that because they’re so clearly the wave of the future, everyone is making them, and now they are crashing down onto the internet like some kind of tsunami rather than the calm relaxing waves they could be. I got so far as to compose my email to the editors:
I would like to write an article tentatively titled “Content Management: Is it for everyone?” The article will examine the phenomenon of content management systems, explain their benefits (template systems, dynamic content, no-brainer editing) and drawbacks (features not matching function, server requirements, burden of complexity) all from a web developer’s perspective. I will conclude that content management systems are in their “terrible teens” and that unless you’re a web development firm who wants to compete with the big boys, or an ISP trying to give something useful to your customers, custom development is still where it’s at. However, this will not be true in ten years.
I knew it was more than the asked for 2 sentences. And I was going to shorten it… maybe. But then I had a thought. (Probably first one of the day.) What if they already have an article about content management? Now I’m in a pickle. Because the only real article that I could find on content management is pretty old. But it covers a lot of the same ground I’d been proposing. Also, the guy who wrote the article is from madison wisconsin, and he apparently developed this 3D shockwave pong that I found distracting. Damn him and his cheese-eating web-development!
Notes after watching Confessions of a Dangerous Mind:
Nietzsche said: “The man who despises himself still respects himself as he who despises.” I am a man who respects himself for not saying the things he wants to say but can’t. Or perhaps I despise the things I want to say, and therefore just don’t say them.
This movie twisted all my thoughts up around inside themselves, and I loved it.
Simultaneously I feel more alone than ever. Mary Anne Evans said: “What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” How lonely was she, pretending to be George Elliot so she could publish as a man?
How lonely am I, typing to my friends, through this void, into nothing; not even talking with them; not even talking?
UPDATE: Here is another quote on loneliness: “Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life.” (Eugene O’Neill) This one gives me some small courage.
well, I got so many great comments on that last post that I decided to reply out here.
Firstly, Roody, you should recommend me some W.J. Williams stuff. I’ve never read any, and I’m not sure where I would want to start. Of course, I’ve got like a dozen books on my shelf at home to read (as soon as I finish the two novels I’m in the middle of right now), but I want to add some to the list!
Second, Hollywood can suck it, as far as I’m concerned. ;)
kill bill part deux… was just not for me. I’m probably just not enough of a film buff to have understood (or cared) about how this movie was an homage to anything or anyone. Sure, there were different styles of film (more so in the first one, I felt–I’d have liked to have seen another cartoon/anime part in the second film) but I guess I feel like Tarantino just didn’t take that idea far enough for me to have enjoyed it for that aspect.
Also, I think the second film sucked in comparison to the first one. For instance, I LOVED the action scene with the crazy 88 in the first one, but lets just say the second one didn’t live up to its action-scene expectations for me. I didn’t feel like the first movie was too long, but I DEFINITELY felt that way about the second one. The first one was non-linear, but without being confusing in any way… but during the second one I didn’t always feel like I knew where in the story we were. I’m not going to say any more about what I didn’t like in the second one cause I don’t want to give anything away here… but lets just say that I enjoyed the trailer for Hero (yes, the same one I just bought on DVD) more than I did the movie we were there to see.
Next item on the agenda–categorizing movies by ‘good’ versus ‘worth seeing’. Was kill bill v.2 worth seeing? Yes. Was it good? Definitely not. I guess I just think a lot of campy and/or action intensive movies are worth seeing, but I would never call them good overall. For me, personally, a good movie has to have plot, acting, writing, action, special effects and cinematography that all at least compare in some positive way to movies that do any of those particular traits really well. The movies that just have one or two aspects going for them are usually mediocre at best. But I usually don’t even mind a mediocre movie if it does something really well. Fight scenes, for instance. Kill bill v.1’s fight scenes made the movie worth seeing for me, but it basically had very little other redeeming value in my opinion.
And of course there are infinite other possible categorizations for movies. The imagination is the limit.
At various times, I’ll admit, often in the midst of depression, I feel the urge to purchase things. Owning things is so stupid… yet the act of acquiring them can also be intensely satisfying.
I splurged on Monday and bought some movies off ebay. Twin Warriors, Hero, Juvenile and Wonderful Days. Twin Warriors is the only one I’ve seen before, and I remember it as one of the better choreographed kung-fu movies I’ve ever seen. I read somewhere that most of the fighting is actually Tai-Chi as well, (The hong kong release title was The Tai-Chi Master.) and I’m sorta excited to watch it again with that in mind.
Hero I heard about last weekend at Minicon in a panel where guest of honor Walter Jon Williams showcased his kenpo skills and talked about how martial arts has influenced his writing. The kenpo was interesting, but I left mainly with a list of action movies I now want to see.
Juvenile and Wonderful days were just movies I decided to pick up because they were a) cheap on ebay, b) highly rated on IMDB and c) foreign science fiction films I’d never even heard of!
Alright, I’m off to spend a little bit of time with laura before we go see a sneak preview of Kill Bill vol. 2 tonight. I’m glad I don’t have to pay money to see the sequel. I sorta reserved judgement on the first one, despite some excellent action sequences. I don’t really feel action alone is enough to carry a movie anymore… it makes it “worth seeing”, but not, in my opinion, good. Although maybe I should also say that there are some movies I like only for the action, and that is enough for them to be good–but if there also happen to be other aspects of the film that I dislike, then the action is not enough by itself to sway the movie into my “good” graces.
I read this quote by Robert Harris just now:
It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you’re forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.
I like cars with flowers in them. But I’d like to write a starship with fireworks inside instead. I guess I don’t really care if it goes anywhere.
Tonight we went to a sneak preview of Mean Girls. It was pretty amusing, and I think I actually enjoyed it more than The Whole Ten Yards, which Nate and I watched last night. It was your above-average teen coming-of-age chick flick.
Apparently the source of most of our tickets is now quitting his job, and we’ll be left without all these free movies in a few weeks. This is quite disturbing, and I almost went up to the Paramount rep. after the movie tonight begging him to take me under his wing or something. In the last few weeks we’ve gone to see Mean Girls, The Whole Ten Yards, Ella Enchanted, Hellboy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I’m sure there are others that I’m forgetting about.
I’m at a coffee shop with Jason right now. Ahhh the mirracle of technolgy.