|
One (or two) sentence reviews
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: I have never wished for Brad Pitt’s character to die so much as during this relentlessly pretentious movie.
Stone Temple Pilots - Houston 6/28/08: Scott Weiland is both clearly insane and our last, best hope for a rock star.
Lush Life by Richard Price: Life on the streets of New York comes alive in a Dickension tale of greed, betrayal, and...oh, forget it. He wrote Clockers and for The Wire.
The Wire - Season 1: I finally broke down and watched this after so many people told me how it’s the best TV series period. Damned if they weren’t right.
Layoffs: Still suck.
I Need More Cowbell - Austin 06/27/08: They need more something, but it ain’t cowbell.
Thievery Corporation - Austin 6/25/08: They’ve moved up from being a third rate imitation of Massive Attack to a first rate imitation of Kruder Dorfmeister. That’s a good thing.
Summer Vacation in Florida: I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, let your envy floweth over.
Galveztown - 2nd round
The first thing that strikes you about Galveston isn¹t the great bridge that carries you over its bay, sidelining the decrepit railroad bridge, or the seagulls or palm trees or the way its denizens crawl out onto their porches to meet the sun in that half-agreeable way, as if to say they are happy the sun is shining, but they know something else is waiting for them out in that Gulf of Mexico - no, the first thing that strikes you is the sticky salt air.
Chinese hackers suck (and so do the Olympics)
My stupid site got hacked by some Chinese hacker using a SQL Injection Attack. So, for the three regular visitors out there, that’s why you’ve got that Trojan Horse virus on your PC. And also why a lot of my entries were semi-unavailable. [Update: Apparently still not entirely secure...still working on it...]
I had to get my host to restore the database from a week ago and then secure the pages in question and then blah, blah, blah, blah. Are you as bored by this as I am? I knew my admin tool was insecure, but I never figured the site was a big enough deal to warrant this. Of course, it’s really not a hacker coming after me personally. It’s just a bot.
At any rate, all is restored.
For now.
Topics for next time:
- The Olympics have become completely irrelevant.
- Rob is going to paint me a painting. I will take bets as to it’s dimensions, color scheme and content. Is he still going Mexico series or has he turned a corner?
- Chinese hackers are better than American hackers because they have a more evil government than we do. And they don’t have cable.
- Korean fried chicken is overrated.
- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club vs. The Black Keys vs. The Black Angels. Three-way tie?
- The economy is fine if you aren’t up to your ass in debt and you have a job. Which is most likely you.
- The dialogue on the Sopranos is better than the dialogue on The Wire.
- You can’t write a novel about 9/11.
- Obama is offering up himself as absolution with no need for confession or payment for sins. I don’t think this will work, especially with big D democrats b/c they hate Republicans so much and want somebody to PAY big.
Life is too short and so are you
"Dad, do you dream?"
"Yes, sometimes."
"What do you dream about?"
"You."
There she goes walking on my skin again
Updates. Because I know updates are what you need
- I closed on my house. I move in 4/19. I have to (in no particular order) change my address on everything, rekey the locks, find a desk, dresser, bookshelves (several), hire movers, get rain gutters puts in, buy a weedeater, lawnmower, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Here’s the thing though. Rob agreed to paint me a painting. If I only have to move into a new house every three years to get one of those, I’d say I’m doing pretty well.
- Thomas is eleven and already smarter than me. I got him Guitar Hero III, Legends of Rokkkk. He’s already beaten Tom Morello if that means anything to Guitar Hero/Rock Star fans. I find it faintly depressing.
- William, Erin and I have concocted a game called airplane wars, in which we make Hawk Harriers and Bulldog Darts and fling them at each other until they’re meshy balls. Then the game turns into paper ball wars. We all laugh ourselves silly and fall onto the floor exhausted.
- I owe over $7,000 in income taxes. If a Democrat gets elected, I don’t see how they could be worse than Bush except in this way: I’ll owe more. I think I’d be fine with that if I didn’t know Hillary Clinton nets over 15 bazillion dollars a year.
- I started going to a church. Gateway. They sing U2 songs and the preacher has a soul patch and there’s a big concert hall for the main church worship area. I know what you’re thinking. But that’s not fair, really. There is something to it. They manage to pull off moments of what Jesus would’ve likely called "being in the world but not of it." I guess that’s a way of saying they reflect on and live in the post-modern culture (i.e. they acknowledge it), but aren’t unaware of that. They’re slogan is "No perfect people allowed." I think it’s a little too cutesy, but I get what they’re saying. They’re saying they don’t want me there.
- The Black Keys released an album with Danger Mouse called Attack and Release. I think the first single, I Got Mine (which reminds me of an old saying my father used to say, but I’ll save that for another post) is kick-ass and the freshest thing I’ve heard in ages. It sounds like Jimi Hendrix channeling, well, Jimi Hendrix, but in an updated Danger Mouse sort of way. I’m so sick of seeing albums released by people I could care less about. Every three (six?) months or so I get energized about music. I mean I think there’s still something beautiful being created that has the potential to crack open my heart. I think I just described Kierkegaard’s aesthetic man. Which sucks for me if you’ve read Kierkegaard.
- We had another (3rd) round of layoffs at my company. This time my boss of nearly 4 years got the boot. He was probably the best boss I ever had, whip smart and fairly flexible about time, work, etc. We’ve seriously scaled down and are trying to "get back to profitability" as our CEO says. I think (perhaps foolishly) that we make a great product that actually helps improve hospitals and I’d hate to see us fail after all the work I’ve put in. Not just for the stock, although obviously that matters. It’s a little like death, these layoffs. One minute a familiar face is there and the next they’re gone, without a word, and you’re supposed to act as if nothing happened.
As I told Kyle, that’s all I got.
Love, music, death, houses, and taxes.
Men can be bitches, women can be idiots
The case against Hillary...
One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation’s health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.
It seems like they are both getting hall passes to me. One side yells "racist." The other side yells "sexist." Who knew the destruction of the Democratic party would lie in its dream ticket fighting each other about how little experience (read: authenticity) the other one has?
The only sure thing I can imagine is that if Hillary takes the super-delegates, but Obama still leads her with the actual delegates, a good chunk of Obama voters will swing toward McCain.
Extra credit:
What exactly is the difference between Hillary and McCain?
Extra extra credit:
Would a McCain v. Hillary general election be construed of playing her gender card against his honorable POW card? It’s going to be hard for her not to pull what Bush did to McCain and come out looking good. Consider also that they actually like each other and have co-sponsored bills together (possibly hurting McCain more than her, but who knows).
And finally:
She has approximately zero chance of winning
Here's tooth in your cornea
From the "wonders never cease" department:
Blind man regains his sight when doctors insert his son’s tooth in his right socket.
Also...
I’m buying a house. It’s probably going to be too expensive and smaller than I’d like, but it will be close to all I hold dear.
It feels like life is starting over. I hope I get this one right.
Expensive sammiches, Sumatran babies
Stuff White People Like
Cliff’s Notes Version:
- Divorce
- Co-ed sports
- Recycling
- Bicycles
- Toyota Prius
- Natural Medicine
- Japan
Whatever, I want to try my new stylus now
Hitler gets banned from iSketch.
I laughed pretty hard on this one. Clip is from a movie called Downfall about the last days of Hitler.
It helps to know that iSketch is an online version of Pictionary.
867-5309
Via Gizmodo:
If you really want to screw with someone, put this Wrong Number Generator on their landline. When your victim (wife) tries to make a call, it’ll screw up some digits and randomly dial someone. Better yet, it only does this 75% of the time, meaning that it’ll let them dial the right number 25% of the time—which allows them to think that they’ve got the sloppiest fingers in the world.
Of course, when I clicked on the product link, it says "Access Denied." Random URL Generator!!! Could this too be a hoax?
There is a Disconnected Number Generator that looks to do the inverse of the Wrong Number Generator. This routes all incoming calls to a disconnected message so the receiver of the calls never knows people aren’t calling them.
All of this brings to mind the old Avenger’s Handbook. Does anybody remember that? There are some downright evil pranks in that sucker.
top
|
