The Ziggurat of Doom

For peeps not on teh buzz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBLEYjXr_Nw&NR=1

You need to turn this mutha up real real loud…by which I mean watch Human Target.

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I wasn’t planning on watching Caprica, since these kinds of spin-offs are almost always very contrived and/or watered-down. People were making noises though, so I gave it a go. Caprica doesn’t particularly suck. Some things about it are very good. It is definitely not a show, as I think Rhad can attest, that one will want to jump in on mid-stream. This is partly because the show doesn’t spend sufficient time explaining everything that’s going on; it feels like it really wants to have 60 minute episodes. The acting and production are good, and the plot is potentially very William Gibson, which I obviously find appealing, though I have my doubts as to the show’s ability to follow through on this. For a science fiction fan, Caprica is probably worth following, for now.

As for Japanland, I haven’t been watching much anime of note in the past while, except for some good remakes. I caught the first to episodes of Sora No Woto. I don’t know about the story yet (interesting world at least: post-apocalyptic, kind of Haibane Renmei esque but less opaque), however this show is gorgeous in HD. Absolutely gorgeous.

Some spoilery critiques of Caprica below…

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Burn Notice has the easiest set-up in the world for awesome television: badass ex-spy with hot trigger happy ex-girlfriend tries to survive contactless and resourceless in Florida. It has no excuse to be bad, but it is. It’s sloppy directing: the pacing blows and their attempt to create a laid-back Florida atmosphere in their action show undercuts its tension. The dialogue is delivered like nobody really cares what’s going on.

Castle has the most generic TV show plot I can think of: homicide detective solves murders. But it’s really good. The dialogue is snappy at the right times to cut the tension, and serious when the tension needs to build. It’s funny, well-paced, good scoring. Characters have the right amount of screen-time. The minor mystery aspect of the murders is in the right place: you can figure out what’s going on before the characters, but won’t all the time: it’s a common mistake to make “mysteries” either intractable or trivial to the viewer/reader.

Castle also has some fun role reversal going on: Beckett is the strong female detective (but not in an annoyingly smug way), and Castle (Nathan Fillion) is a prissy writer who shadows her for story ideas and, usually futilely, attempts to help. This show only clocks in at 1 or 2 Mulder-Scullys, unlike Bones which seems to be maintaining something absurd like 7 or 8 (more like Boners, amirite?).

Okay. Wrong question.

Holidays are a good excuse to donate to charities and causes, which help us affluent white folk feel like we’re zomgactivists while sipping overpriced lattes and complaining about politics / poor service / lousy sex / etc. The internet makes this easy (both the donating and the complaining) and provides a plethora of wells in which to vomit disposable income. I think of it as part of the new years hangover recovery process.

Absent other ideas, it’s hard to feel bad about supporting wikipedia / wikimedia foundation, IMO.

This is about as preachy / disgustingly self-righteous as I get for the year (not counting spaces v. tabs debates … I wonder if there’s some way I can donate toward making everyone use tabs for indentation), so feel free to condemn / ignore.

This is basically what I’ve done on my vacation:

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Add to the short list of things worth doing in Cleveland: The Velvet Tango Room. Just make sure you come early or get reservations; it’s gotten a bunch of Top 10 Bars In The Country reviews so it’s a bit popular. Right off the W 25th stop on the red line.

High School Musical. I saw like twenty minutes near the end of it. They shot the songs like music videos instead of scenes in a musical, including some horrible green-screening. Ugh.

Also saw most of My Super Ex Girlfriend, which earned maybe two snorts and a chuckle on the comedy scale. The real point of this movie? Uma Thurman is hot, ya?

This (Cable Surfing Commando) might be an ongoing series, as I continue to explore cable TV (we only had poor people TV when I was a kid). More likely I’ll forget about this idea within the week…

Since rationalism already means rationalism, what do you call a prejudiced attitude toward the rational?

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A few of us went out to Shaker Cinema to catch the GI Joe movie, which was highly watchable as long as you do not have a problem with any of the following:

* the idea of the big dumb action movie
* walking through a burned out economic wasteland of a city to spend twelve bucks and two hours watching several million dollars of special effects and drinking a 72 Oz soft drink
* hilarious pseudo-”science”
* blatant chauvinism

GI Joe reacted with my expectations roughly as follows:

* exceeded my general low-bar prediction of “better than Wolverine”
* more send-ups to its roots than the zero I expected
* villains even more 007 than I’d hoped; could not have been more so without a hairless cat to stroke; seriously I think there might have been sharks with frickin laser beams
* action sequences on par with expectation: though sword-fight cinematography is pretty stale these days, the accelerator suits in the trailer lived up to their promise

This is a solid popcorn movie, and I actually look forward to the sequel.

This link is not work safe:

http://wildammo.com/2009/07/27/unusual-paintings-of-obama-naked-with-unicorns/

If you liked Chewbacca’s blog, you might also enjoy Wookiepedia

Maybe you’ve heard me going on about the Erlang programming language before? Well, watch the Erlang movie!

This video mostly consists of old Ericsson engineers with old desk phones, old computers, and timeless British accents saying “Hello Joe.” “Hello Mike.” over-and-over while they demonstrate the telephony app they implemented in erlang. Much of what they demonstrate is not too shocking if you have a fair breadth of exposure to modern and classical programming languages, but if you watch the whole thing you’ll see one erlang feature not so easily duplicated, still somewhat impressive today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

This is a slightly refined version of a tangent-rant from my anime blog.

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More proof that truth is stranger than fiction:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/12/america/11punkt.php?page=1

So I bought a PS2 (which axed a fair bit of my productivity for the holiday =\ ). Now I’m trying to work together a long-term shopping list. I find it very pleasing to be able to buy top tier games for $15 or less.

I already own: Katamari Damacy, We Love Katamary, Xenosaga I, II, and III. Final Fantasy X, X2, and XII. God of War. The Bard’s Tale. I think that’s it.

What should I get? I want to build myself a nice all-star library while PS2 games are still easy to find and super-affordable.

Already on the list:
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I’m back to obsessively counting electoral votes.

My current prediction:

Obama: 271
McCain: 267

but with a lot of marginal McCain victories

Via Post, via metaquotes…

You know how sometimes people take Shakespeare and reimagine it in alternate settings?

Somebody(s) bizarro’d that up, rewriting a classic of, uh, Tarentino…in Elizabethen English.

Thus: A Slurry Tale

Though I recommend first, the metaquoted exerpts