Paul Flammond? Pal, Flame On!

Is he the greatest Canadian? Can there even be such a thing? It's too nebulous to discuss, but I will tell you one thing that came through loud and clear last night. Tommy Douglas is a symbol for something that most of us are starting to care about more than anything else. Good, universal health care that seems to have a future. If there's anything that has come to define us (other than hating americans) it's access to health care. I think the fact that most of us are actually scared to death that we might not be able to keep it was what put Tommy over the top. Let's face it: Terry Fox had that thing sewn up in the final analysis. As beloved as Trudeau was and is, he's also hated by some and in the end his accomplishments were political, not personal. Fox is the true inspirer, a singular hero that showed us all what we could be, not what he could be. When we see Terry Fox dip his foot and start to run, he's us, dipping our foot, starting out on any great adventure. It is impossible to remain unaffected, and by rights that makes him the very greatest for us all.

But Tommy Douglas won, because he both inspires and accomplishes, like a perfect melding of the two runners up. And because what he made has become what we are, a country that takes care of those that cannot take care of themselves. Is he the greatest canadian? I don't know, but I do know that for most of the people last night he was the greatest thing they could wish for.

a small wonder

Christmas in July
The Great McGinty
Sullivan's Travels
The Lady Eve
The Palm Beach Story
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
The Great Moment
Hail the Conquering Hero
Unfaithfully Yours

Starting in 1940 and until his somewhat disastrous grab for both personal and career freedom (never go into business with Howard Hughes, that dude's crazy) Preston Sturges put together a string of perfectly constructed comedies that has never been equaled. Take a look at the list above, it represents the pinnacle of hollywood sound comedy. Now, take another look and think about whether you've seen any of those films. You probably haven't (although you might have seen the remake of Unfaithfully Yours) unless you've been willing to fork over $50+ for either Criterion DVD on that list, The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels. And these are both terrific, well worth the Criterion treatment. But so is The Palm Beach Story, consistently voted one of the top 100 movies ever made, and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Neither of these, or any of the others are available in any DVD release at all.

That changed today, when I looked at my Amazon recommendations and was overjoyed to see TPBS listed as coming out in February of next year. For $10. It feels good, as I round towards 300 of these damn things, to finally see some maturity in the market that lets the really good lesser known stuff hit the shelves. Do yourself a favor and just buy this thing, seriously, what's $10, more or less? With any luck we can open some floodgates and get the rest of these pieces of movie heritage released at a resonable price, making sure that they don't have to die out like so many other great films from the past.

response

Just because you say
I should write down a Haiku
Doesn't mean I should

it can happen here

I have a son. You know this. You do not have kids. This you also know. So I am in a position to know what is coming. I know, for example, that at some point in the future you will find yourself deciding where to eat out based solely on which restaurant currently has the best toys. You will even go to a restaurant and then leave again because the toys do not measure up. I also know that you will push a cart through a grocery store at under 100 yards per hour, because someone small is sitting inside the cart in an entirely inappropriate way and it is all you can do not to knock their brains right out of their heads by coming around a corner too fast. You will enter into bargains in bad faith, knowing full well that the other party cannot collect on their part of the deal, as they will be asleep when it comes time to see the deal to completion. I know that even though you cannot draw, you will draw things for someone else to colour in, things which are far removed from their intended depiction. I know all these things, because these things cannot just be happening to me, can they?

Call Shep Pettibone

Max's "naked dance song" has now officially taken on a life of its own. Having successfully launched his dance music career, the next logical step is the mega drum n' bass remix, so I'm issuing a challenge to all 5 of you who read this from time to time. Send me a remix of "tnds" and I'll post it here. Or you could wait a week, and I'll just do my own and post it. Check the comments section on the previous post to see just how funny this can become (thanks tederick)

pass the peas

A belated happy thanksgiving to my American Friends, A&S. Unlike us, they have an actual meaning to their Thanksgiving celebration, namely the successful survival of the first bunch of religious zealots to make it over here and establish a beachhead for the red states in years to come. Yay, Pilgrims, the only cult ever to seem too extremely puritanical that England wouldn't have 'em. I will be celebrating by mentally burning a witch all damn day. God Bless America-uh!

In our case, I firmly believed that no one knew why we have our thanksgiving when we do, and then i found this:
The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an English explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did not succeed but he did establish a settlement in Northern America. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now called Newfoundland, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving. Other settlers arrived and continued these ceremonies. He was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him - Frobisher Bay.
At the same time, French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, also held huge feasts of thanks. They even formed 'The Order of Good Cheer' and gladly shared their food with their Indian neighbours.After the Seven Year's War ended in 1763, the citizens of Halifax held a special day of Thanksgiving.During the American Revolution, Americans who remained loyal to England moved to Canada where they brought the customs and practices of the American Thanksgiving to Canada. There are many similarities between the two Thanksgivings such as the cornucopia and the pumpkin pie.Eventually in 1879, Parliament declared November 6th a day of Thanksgiving and a national holiday. Over the years many dates were used for Thanksgiving, the most popular was the 3rd Monday in October. After World War I, both Armistice Day and Thanksgiving were celebrated on the Monday of the week in which November 11th occurred. Ten years later, in 1931, the two days became separate holidays and Armistice Day was renamed Remembrance Day.Finally, on January 31st, 1957, Parliament proclaimed..."A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed ... to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.

So there, we do, as always, have a perfectly reasonable expalnation for what we're doing. As Canadian as.... possible, under the circumstances.

okay, so I admit it. I'm begging.

It's shameless, but this is something I think I need to have. I promise if I get it I'll post a cartoon a day from now until the year 2192.

Merry X-Mas!

I knew I should have made that bet.

the road is long

Since everybody else is going on about upcoming movie projects they think are either good or bad ideas, I thought I would just point out that Robert Towne is scheduled to write and direct a remake of The 39 Steps for sometime next year. No word on casting, but we'll see. I have my doubts.

I Soliti Ignoti

That moment when they come through the wall, and Cappanelle is just standing there with the water in his hands, that is the funniest thing ever. Also the argument while they're on the skylight. And the whole stolen car, and the scene on the roof and even the con about the sentence. Just brilliant.

30fps x 15s = 450,000 words

Good news! if all goes well and I get the phone in the post below I can use it to start posting 15 second videos to the blog. That's right, the blog's gonna finally live up to its name and become the multimedia extravaganza you've all been clamoring for. I'll let you know (via quicktime) as soon as she's up and running!

screen kiss

I was going to launch into a whole rant about how weary I am at having to sit through other people talking in movies and at plays. This wasn't brought on by any specific incident or anything, it just occurred to me while I was watching Cinema Paradiso this morning. Amazingly I have managed to never see this up to now. I wasn't avoiding it, it was just one of the hundreds of great lauded movies on my list of stuff to get around to. That list is long,and frankly embarassing for someone who loves movies as much as I do. There's only so many hours in the day, week or year, and I'm watching as fast as I can. In any case, I digress. The point is that watching a movie about watching movies made me realize what a special experience that can be, when 650 pairs of eyes and ears are all transfixed by the exact same thing, like a moment out of time. I'm sorry because it seems to me unlikely that I'll have too many more of those experiences. People are just unable to give themselves over like that when it's so much more appealing to sit back in judgement of what they're watching. It's one of the main reasons I'm not much of a film reviewer; I find it changes the experience when I have to actively think about what I'm watching while I'm watching it. I'd rather just submit, lose myself for 2 hours and enjoy something a few hundred other people worked their asses off to bring me.

much more than this

My day ends, and not a soul since my last post.i believe I shall go quite mad, in the solitude. woo-woo-ncxsjdan cAN Cbfewqijfczse nipfewc v gerg fr furgle.

the state of my day

saturday update

Since 10:15 (my last post) I have spoken to exactly 4 people. One bought a phone (yay! $6 commision! I paid for half of my lunch!) One asked me about long distance cell phone rates, one brought back his starchoice receivers because he's moving out and one wanted to look at phones he couldn't afford and generally waste my time. And I would consider this a busy saturday around here. A customer also described the store as "hidden" and "hard to find", which may explain all the downtime.

gabba gabba hey

Walking through the woods, listening to my dad tell me about Howard Keel's career was good for my soul. I loves the communing with nature, I do. Yep, I just loves to commune. I'm practically a communist. All in all a day of mixed influence that can only be had in the crazy world we live in. Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've been away from work for a couple of days, and it's the only place quiet enough to blog from, so this is gonna be one of those "here's what's been going on with me in the last couple of days" posts that just rambles from start to finish.

Wednesday night, got home from work by six, made dinner (the new puff pastry frozen pizza in the insider's report - decadent) and headed out for poker. Made a stop off at Dave's Jumbo, and executed a DVD trade to beat the band, changing a new copy of Jersey Girl acquired in a previous trade and my old, stale, 1 disc 2 sided copy of Gone With The Wind for the spanking new, $50 4 disc flava of the same movie. As much as I love the double dipping, some of those original Warner's releases really were just dumped off of laser disc to get them in the market and so can stand some improvement. The best part was that in the course of Dave giving me a generous allowance for my trades plus a discount on my purchase I wound up getting the new disc and having the store owe me money (only $2, but still) Feels good when it's like getting something for free.

Then it was off to poker, the consistent high point of my week, win or lose. But in this case win, and better still we played over an hour of what Jason and Chandra call "TV poker", Texas Hold'em with a small and big blind. Thoroughly enjoyable, and a great group of guys to hang out with once a week.

Thursday, after some errands in the morning I decided to get myself in the mood to watch 53 one minute movies. So I did the opposite of watching a one minute movie by settling in for a 165 minute movie, Once Upon A Time In The West. (Awesome, by the way, and a great recommend by the digital bits, which is where I was put on to it as the classic DVD of the year.) Then it was off to the fest.

I've been in screenings where there were unavoidable technical problems before, but never where that meant that people I care about were personally affected. Let me just say how deeply sympathetic I am, and before anyone feels too bad about it they might stop to remember that problems aside, they actually got off their asses and made a film festival where none existed and they ought to be damn proud of that. Besides, when it comes time to write the 25 year retrospective of this thing the glitch can be part of chapter two. I hope all was well with the affected filmmakers, and although it can never be exactly the same I thought everyone did an awesome job of giving as proper a screening as was possible to the films marred by the glitch.

As the for fils themselves, I was surprised by how many were genuinely good, enjoyable minutes. I loved Daniel Cockburn's Chicken/Egg most of all, but thoroughly enjoyed Leap, L'eau, Hungus (best audience non reaction ever), Ratta Tooi (simply brilliant, the funniest time compression I've seen in a while) and especially Sex and Cecile, the only one I'd love to see expanded into a full length feature. Congratulations to Ryan Feldman for blowing my fragile little mind.

We only stayed at the after party a few minutes (I had to hike the next day) but all in all a thoroughly enjoyable night.

Friday I managed to get out of the house by a reasonably decent hour, arriving to pick up my dad only about 30 minutes later than I had planned. The rest of the day was great, and the hike itself was absolutely beauriffic, the kind of slightly overcast, crisp fall day I dream about in my perfect world, and I was exhilarated when we left. Then I spent 3 hours driving until I got home, exhausted at 6. I knocked back one more DVD, the slightly disappointing (because it was built up so much before) Force of Evil with John Garfield. Polonsky's words and the fraternal relationship both foreshadow On the Waterfront (as does Polonsky himself, the victim of the blacklist and charter member of the Hollywood Ten) but the overall effect is just a bit stagey even for the acting style of the time. I kept finding myself wishing the movie had been made five years later, when the method might have breathed some more intensity into the dialogue.

Then it was off to Dave's a Friday night ritual that lets me eat pizza, drink coke, and generally suck at xBox, which I am happy to do. I got a first hand look at Halo 2, a game I was even on the verge of enjoying. This says a lot for Halo 2, because I have never met a first person shooter I did not hate with an intensity normally reserved for the neo-nazis. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate first person shooters. They annoy me. There is nothing I hate more when playing video games than not being able to see my character on the screen. Except playing games where the thing that can kill me could be behind me where I can't see it. Oh, and I especially hate games where I die more than I live, a virtual feature in most of these "arena" fps things.

Yup, I fucking hate these things. Frankly, video games continue to suck more the better they look. The best games for me are Ms. Pac Man, Robotron, Q-Bert, The Original Mario Bros, Joust, and Donkey Kong jr. Nothing released in the last 20 years even comes close in terms of pure playabililty, something that was sacrificed long ago to the gods of high res and immersive environment. Also, video games are not more fun when they are hard, they are more fun when they're easy. If I wanted to fail repeatedly I would live my life, not escape from it.

Now it's Saturday, I've been at work writing this for more than an hour and have so far interacted with one person who wanted to know whether they could trade in their cable box here (they can't). The weekends are so slow, I've decided I'm blogging every single interaction I have today, just to show you what that's like for those of you making a living at jobs you respect.

The long walk

It looks like I'm gonna get off my fat ass and go on a hike! I like to exercise once a year, whether I need it or not.

My real life seems to have fallen through the cracks between myself and my film

Although there was no progress made on a percentage basis (I didn't watch one DVD last night) I did manage to clean the PVR a fair bit, ploughing through 3 daily shows, wonderfalls, scrubs, house, and most importantly Sherman's March, which I finally nabbed off the free preview of Documentary Channel. This is one of those movies I have been hearing about since it was made 20 years ago, and through the wonder of digital television I can now cross it off my list. It's the progenitor of the personal essay doc, without it there is no Roger & Me, and oh, by the way it's three hours long. Save me from myself.

I think the deck chair should go.... Hey, is that a freaking iceberg?

KMart is buying Sears (pretty good for a company that was nearly bankrupt less than 3 years ago) in the states. Up here, The Bay bought KMart and merged it with Zellers about 5 years ago. So does this mean that Zellers owns Sears now?

O bother, why art thou?

News has officially broken about Disney going ahead with a Toy Story sequel without Pixar's participation. Under the terms of their deal Disney has every right to do this, of course. They are also making a giant, mammoth mistake by exercising this right. What exactly is the target audience for a non-Pixar, non-Tom Hanks Toy Story movie? Never mind the rest of the cast they won't get (can you really see John Ratzenberger or Wallace Shawn, two actors who benefit again and again from Pixar's love of their work sacrificing that for a sequel that will undoubtedly tank with or without them?)

More importantly, Disney has sequel rights, but do they have the right to the actual data? This never mattered before in animation because in hand drawn 2d we expect a certain amount of variance in how characters are rendered from film to film. But 3d characters are based on very specific data sets that describe every single aspect of their looks and movement. What is Toy Story 3 going to look like if Woody and Buzz are slightly off from how we're expecting them to be? My suspicion is we're going to get the same kind of soul destroying replicants we've been enduring with the Joe Alaskey Looney Tunes voices and post Jim Henson Kermit the frog. In other words come 2006 it's gonna be "Toy Story 3: Close, But No Cigar." Why would I wanna see that, especially if Pixar has any brains at all and releases its own original film 1 week before Disney rolls out their knockoff.

when will it end?

There's a stack of unwatched DVD's in my house that I'm trying to get through before acquiring any more. It's around 30 discs, about 100 hours of viewing by my estimates. There's the ongoing PVR schedule, which includes The Daily Show, Rescue Me, Lost, Dinner For Five, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Simpsons, Arrested Development, Saturday Night Live, Joey (although I'm not sure for how much longer), Father of the Pride (ditto), Wonderfalls, Scrubs, Enterprise, the occasional movie and starting tonight I'll be adding House and The Amazing Race. That right there is about 12 hours per week. I surveyed the next two months and there are around 15 movies I'd like to see theatrically, about 2-3 per week.

Never mind that I haven't read a novel in more than a year. Never mind that I play poker once a week, play xBox once a week, and try to go to the park with Max or cook or eat out or just hang out or just do housework. My career is like a break from my real job, entertaining myself. I also decided recently to try and watch the entire run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, a decision which I'm sure I will see to fruition around the time my son leaves home for university. You can say it's a good problem to have, but I'm starting to curse my brain for taking an interest. I feel a constant pressure to try to stay on top of it all, something I'm pretty sure recreation is not supposed to result in. I'm gonna give up and spend a year on a mountain just as soon as I can figure out how to make sure no one misses me.

His name is Bolo

How can The Amazing Race top Mirna & Shmirna, The Twins, and The Moms? Married Professional Wrestlers, that's how. I cannot wait to see these guys, especially when they're competing against a former CIA Black Ops specialist who flew his plane to the north pole without a cover on it. Mwa ha ha ha ha!

History is bunk

This may be one of the coolest ideas for a website ever devised, especially if they can keep it up for a while. Best. Time Capsule. Ever.

The Trials and Tribulations of Russell Jones

RIP and godspeed for Ol' Dirty Bastard, charter member of the Wu Tang, and Hip Hop's "International Man of Mystery" according to one website. We'll miss your crazy style, your troublemaking ways and your bizarre press misadventures. But mostly we'll miss saying "Ol' Dirty Bastard" whenever someone asks what's on our iPod.

hypocritcism

John Carpenter is weighing in on the remake of Precinct 13 that's out in a couple months (trailer here.) In the article he complains about all the remakes being produced right now, saying Hollywood is out of good ideas, etc. Which would be fine, if he hadn't spent half his career remaking Howard Hawks movies his own damn self. Hell, Precinct was just a thinly veiled version of Rio Bravo, and a damn good one. The Thing, anyone? What is Big Trouble in Little China if not an ersatz John Wayne film? Dude, you of all people oughta be down with the remakes. You're on record as idolizing Hawks, wanting to pattern your career on him, so shut up. Also, imho the trailer looks kickass, and remake or no I'll be at a movie where Larry Fishburne is a cop killin' super criminal.

frame

My ongoing war with the unwatched DVD stack continues apace. In the last 48 hours I waded through Jackie Brown, Say Anything, Stranger Than Paradise, about 1/2 of the Looney Tunes Vol. 2 (just the cartoons, mind you. I still need to watch most of them again for the commentaries, music only tracks, etc.)

Max has watched the Road Runner disc at least 10 times, too. Every time the coyote tries a new scheme Max says "that's not going to work!" and then giggles as he is proven right.

My mother pointed out that those cartoons are educational. They teach the laws of physics. Having watched them, I would respectfully submit that she may want to review those laws herself, I think she might be a little rusty in that area.

today would be a good day to call and invite yourself to dinner

36 hours and 1 very long cartoon filled day later, Max is back at school and everyone (for now) seems healthy. I have been closely monitoring my own health and subsisting on a diet of soup, toast with peanut butter and jujubes. It's hard to resist candy in little serving size bags, post Hallowe'en. Last night I had 8. Speaking of which, when did everyone get together and cancel the apostrophe in Halloween? Was it conscious or just some sort of apostrophe atrophy?

Tried to watch the commentary track for Schizopolis yesterday, but 90 minutes of Stephen Soderbergh interviewing himself about how fantastically brilliant he is (even if the whole thing was tongue in cheek) was just too much to ask. I petered out around half way. It's official: "funny" commentaries on DVDs are just not funny. Not for more than 10 minutes, max. It's like stand up comedy without an audience. I also rewatched "The Untouchables" and was blown away by the score. Who is this Ennio Morricone guy, anyways?

Canada has a new, officially recognized minority now. That's right, some of you out there may be eligible for special grants and programs, and may even be entitled to open a casino on crown lands. Yes, with the addition of so many of my friends' blogs in the last couple months Canada officially has more people blogging than not blogging, making non bloggers a legal minority group. On behalf of everyone I salute the bloggers if only for pointing out how empty the non bloggers lives truly are. You keep writing, and minutiae will never go unnoticed. (Don't think for one second I'm not fully aware of the irony contained in this post.)

Can you imagine what I could blog about if anything significant ever actually happened to me?

create a sacred space

Max is extremely ill right now, not life threateningly or anything melodramatic like that, just dinner spewingly sick. Yup, to paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, everything's coming up. period. No roses yet, unless he ate some when I wasn't looking. This is blogworthy because in our incredibly lucky experience of slightly under two cases, our kid never chucks. Like never. So I'm a little uncomfortable with the whole thing, although Leah more than makes up for it. She's doing the whole florence nightingale thing, knowing exactly what to do when all my instincts are telling me to just run from the apartment screaming. The best part is that whatever he's got it's highly contagious and its only symptom is the upchuck, which puts me in the position of ticking time bomb of vomit, a place I'd rather not be.

I'm already not feeling totally well, and I've spent the better part of the last two days at home catching up on rest. And DVD's. Also, my PVR is emptied out so that's going back tomorrow, providing I'm not "calling earl" all morning. I'm also looking forward to having a recovering child at home that doesn't want to do anything but watch cartoons and sip flat ginger ale, something I was hoping to do anyways what with the new Golden collection of Looney Tunes arriving by mail today.

I've made a stack of unwatched DVD's that now numbers around 40, so I'm hoping if I can hit 1 per night between now and the end of the year that I should be all caught up for 2005. I'm not betting on it, though.

Taking a week off from poker to watch the inevitable but disappointing election results made me a bit rusty last night, as the two bad beats and general lack of profit can attest. On the plus side those donuts Adam brought were delicious. Next week more concentration and fewer donuts ought to be the order of the day.

cocaine is a hell of a drug

There's an album version of the Lenny Kravitz gap ad song. An album version. Worst. Lyrics. Ever.

I'm crazy for this little lady
I'm freaking for my little baby
'Cause she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Don't need all my other ladies
I'm beggin' for this little lady
'Cause I tell you she's cool
She's divine

I know she's a super lady
I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

I'm crazy for that lady
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated lady
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Never knew there was such a lady
That would make me want to straighten
Out my life at this time but I find
I'm thinkin' 'bout this pretty lady
I would love for her to have my baby
'Cause you know she's no fool
She's refined

I know she's a super lady
I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

I'm crazy for that lady
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated lady
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Yeah
Don't you know she blows my mind
All the time
'Cause she makes me feel good
Like a real woman should
Yeah
She's so mine
Yeah

I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

I'm crazy for that lady
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated lady
And she makes me feel good
And she makes me feel good
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Yeah
Don't you know she blows my mind
All the time
And she makes me feel good
Like a real woman should
Yeah
All the time
Yeah
Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah


get off the pipe, Lenny. We miss ya.

i have no title for this post

There is a new PVR. The 8300. It fixes a bunch of the junk that was wrong with the last one, like letting me know how much disk space is still available and also letting me only set recurrent recording for new episodes of shows and not repeats. It also does a bunch of other, for me less neat stuff. It passes through all its signals to hdmi, important only if you have bought a brand new tv in, like the last five minutes. also it's smaller, which I suppose is always nice. It's also 160gb instead of 120, a big improvement in my mind. It doesn't much matter for regular broadcast, but that's about 10 extra hours of HD (on top of a semi skimpy 30 hours) so I'm pleased with that. The main thing isn't set yet, and that's multi-room. That means that the next upgrade is going to make it possible for you to have one PVR and several "satellite" regular cable boxes (read: cheaper) around your house and they'll all network together and talk to each other and share the recorded content.

There's just one problem. I have stuff recorded on my old PVR which I can't get off. When I bring ti back to Rogers to trade in they don't transfer my shows from one PVR to the other, even though both machines have firewire out and in and doing the transfer ought to be possible. This means I either watch TV like mad this week and try to clean off the box or I have to wait forever to upgrade.

There ought to be a better way, and there might be soon, when we actually get the hard drives out of our houses and on to the network where they belong. There are ipTv companies toying around with this right now, just giving you virtual storage for your shows online and accessing it like video on demand. Want more storage? just pay a small increase. Better yet, did you forget to record something and now you've missed it? Just search around. If anyone else recorded it they can sell you access to it for a nominal fee.

Eventually what you'll see is content creation (producers) stay in business, but content delivery (networks) are just gonna be gone. Who's gonna care which channel a show is on when they can practically download it on demand?

shitstorm

boy oh man, make one little observation that admits to the world how uncomfortable you are all the gorram time and people just jump to some fucking conclusions. Okay, so here goes. Anyone who actually knows me and thinks I am a sociopath, and/or anyone who doesn't feel like they are play acting their way through adult life just step on up and make your stand. Anyone? Anyone? Okay, that's better then. Also I had an awesome weekend, people, really interacted with the other humans and even cried at the beauty of creation. There, I feel better now.

watch for gesture

Max was in the bathroom again this week, practicing his faces in the mirror. This is something he's been doing for more than half his life, mostly when he thinks we aren't looking. He just tries the faces out, sees what they look like, perfects them. More than half the time he gives them a name, too. The hairy eyeball. The pickle face. Angry man. Then he'll whip'em out on us when he thinks it's appropriate.

We are raising a child who seems completely detached from real emotion. They're just suits of clothes he puts on for the occasion. I should be worried, but it seems to me that this probably isn't uncommon. I am unable to truly feel anything most of the time. Emotions are just suits of clothes, especially when they're happening to me. I get more genuinely upset for the characters in a drama I'm watching than I do when something happens in my own life. Sociopathy, here I come.

Next time you see me, go ahead and ask me how I feel. I swear if I figure out how to feel I'll let you know.

Inocencia Eguchi

i'm really worried about her. she keeps sending me stuff about her mortgage and it keeps winding up in my junk mail folder so by the time I get around to looking at it it's too late to help her out. Oh, and also I have no idea who she is. Spam spam spam spam spammity spam, wonderful spam.

should i be turned on by this?

I'm in line right now.

Yup, that's how I wants it to be.

monday morning quarterback

Twice I've felt it in my gut. Twice. It's not like I think about this all the time, but I wish I would listen to myself more when I do.

In 1995, 7 days after the release of Toy Story, Pixar went public, and I distinctly thought "If I had a couple thousand dollars I would invest in that right now." The fact is that I might have been able to lay my hands on that kind of money from a credit card or a relative if I had been really serious about it. I just didn't want to risk it. Had I taken the risk, and bought shares at $30 or so (it opened at 40 but plunged under institutional investing almost immediately and so $30 seems realistically what I would have paid) then at today's prices my $2000 would be worth $5400, not a bad return at all.

It's nothing compared to what shoulda woulda coulda the second time. The only other time I felt that gut feeling to buy a stock was about a year and a half ago, right before Apple introduced the itunes music store. Apple stock was at about $13.50, the company actually had a market cap that was lower than their cash on hand, and it was an open secret that apple was getting ready to start selling music online. If I had taken my pixar money (it would have been about $4500 at that point) and just bought apple stock with it, I'd be sitting on $18,000 right now.

Bugger me for a little courage, eh?

I knew someone smarter than me was already on this

Click above for a vastly more coherent summary of the gay marriage issue.

Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!

In a stunningly ugly display, 11 states were asked to vote on the gay marriage question.Guess what? Yup, gay marriage was resoundingly rejected in every single state (even Oregon!) Guess why? Because you can't open up the rights of a minority to a vote decided by the majority. Minority rights are what free societies are supposed to be all about. Can you imagine if instead of abolishing slavery because it was wrong, Lincoln had just decided to go ahead and put it to a state by state vote? That's George Bush for you, folks, catering to prejudice and hatred by letting the overwhelmingly bigoted and stupid majority decide. Let's break down the arguments, shall we?

1) Gay Marriages undermine the institution of marriage.
how, by what means? Besides, I think the institution of marriage is being undermined quite nicely all on its own, don't you? What the hell is a 50% divorce rate if not the crumbling of the institution?

2) Marriage is for procreation.
Okay, by that logic anyone who is unable or unwilling to have children should immediately dissolve their marriage. Like, right now. Also, there should be no more adoptions, since these only encourage the infertiles to get married in the first place.

3) Gay Marriage makes being gay more socially acceptable.
I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but being gay isn't some sort of optional club membership. Social acceptability of something which is genetically inevitable is kind of moot. Gay people exist, have always existed (although many in the past had to hide it for fear of being beaten to death) and will always exist, just like black people, short people, etc. If you argued that a marriage between two short people was going to promote the social acceptability of being short people would never stop looking at you funny.

4) Gay marriage will hurt the country economically.
Marriage exists in modern society for one reason only: By legitimizing a relationship and giving that relationship certain benefits and tax savings the government can create a desire in more people to enter into the relationship. Why would the government want people to be married? So they can bring up kids, certainly (sonething gay couples do all the time with no special problems) and so that people are more productive at work, which social studies prove is a direct by-product of a stable relationship. Gay marriages help just as much as straight ones on these counts.

Leave these people alone and let them do whatever they want to do with each other. How is what they are doing hurting us?

That's the trouble with these things

Okay, so Paul Dini just joined the writing staff for Lost, giving the show the best group of writers on television to a seriously ridiculous degree. Past shows represented now include Batman Adventures (Dini), Buffy & Angel (David Fury), Alias and Felicity (JJ Abrams) and The Shield (Kim Clements.) If you're not already watching this show you need to start, like tonight. Here's what you need to know about past episodes to fully get into it: Nothing. They're trapped on an Island and something weird might be going on to keep them there. That's like, the whole set-up. If you need more background then that try the episode guides. Also you can check out the fansite, if you want to go deeper. Just watch, though. The best show on TV is gonna be around awhile, and you don't want to have nothing to contribute at the watercooler.

dude, just give up already.

Ohio is not going to switch sides. It is over. just get used to it, we've got 4 more years of this shit. On the plus side, the american dollar should continue to tank, making all kinds of stuff cheaper to buy up here! let's hear it for the canadian dollar at par, people!



For a real, reasoned view of why Bush won and why people like him are just gonna keep winning, read this. See, Bush wins because americans are too stupid to dislike him. Somewhere H.L. Mencken is laughing his ass off right now.

I'm just not sure who I'm not voting for

this is the ballot in Ohio. see if you can figure out how to vote for bush. (hint: It's the box marked in red)



So on Nov. 2, vote yes on proposition 12. or no. depending on how it's worded.

I know what I'm voting for

Seriously, it's like eating a peanut butter cup sandwich.





"Kraft Peanut Butter with Chocolate
New Kraft Peanut Butter with Chocolate combines the wholesome goodness of Kraft Peanut Butter with pure chocolate for a taste the whole family will love.
Kraft Peanut Butter with Chocolate is a source of 4 essential nutrients.
For best creamy texture, keep this product stored at room temperature. Refrigerating the product will cause it to stiffen and make it harder to spread. Enjoy!"

I'm really gonna say something now...hey, are those pork rinds fresh?

who wouldn't give him candy?

superman, originally uploaded by mattvideo.

see me, feel me...

This is some wacky wacky shit, man.

promises were made across this desk

Click here to see Jon Stewart shamelessly hawk product for amazon.com. Seriously, he just bought a speedboat.