Cynicism on Valentine's Day. . . I'll bet no-one's ever thought of THAT before!
Showing posts with label Evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evil. Show all posts
Monday, February 14, 2011
Valentine's Day-- 'Cause Nothing Says "Love" Quite Like A Holiday Named After a Catholic Priest Who Had His Head Cut Off.
On this, that highest of high fabricated giftcard non-holy days, let us remember that love is evolution's way of making sure Daddy sticks around just long enough to help raise the kids.
Cynicism on Valentine's Day. . . I'll bet no-one's ever thought of THAT before!
Cynicism on Valentine's Day. . . I'll bet no-one's ever thought of THAT before!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
French and Just Star Trek
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
Fuck all of you.
Fuck you, The Onion. Fuck you, Saturday Night Live (fuck you twice for not allowing videos to be shown in Canada from nbc.com and then filing a copyright clain against Youtube.com for showing the same video!). Fuck you, Spill.com. Fuck you Leonard Nimoy.
And fuck you*.
Fuck you for buying into this ridiculous lie, that if someone doesn't like the new Star Trek movie. . . it's okay. It's not because it's a bad movie. It's because it's a great movie, and the only people who would be dumb enough to complain about it are those closed minded, continuity horny Trekkies. That's right, only the hard core losers who never moved out of their parent's basement would dislike this movie. Those pathetic losers don't realize what their missing out on. It's not our (ie. your) problem, it's their's.
Now that I've undoubtably won you over. . . what did I think?
Star Trek is a bad movie. It's notexceptionally all bad, but it's bad. I say this as a lapsed Trekkie, open minded enough to want to see where the film-makers would go with this movie. In fact, I was anxious to see some change. Like I said, I'm a lapsed Trekkie. I'm lapsed because the stories that Star Trek the franchise was trying to sell me all sucked. I wanted something new.
I'm stressing this because I truly believe that the fact of Star Trek the movie's badness is something objective. It does not rest on your being or not being a Trekkie. Everyone, of all colors and creeds, should be able to see how bad this movie is with but a little bit of thought. This film is borne of a suckiness that transcends barriers of (sub-)culture, the kind of badness that, I had hoped, would touch the very depths of our common humanity.
But no. I was wrong. 96% wrong.
Sigh.
It's not the changes that bother me. I don't mind the parallel universe time altering thing. I don't mind the new design of the Enterprise. I don't mind new actors-- in fact, I thought Karl Urban and Simon Pegg were great in this film. I don't mind a more emotional Spock, and I don't mind Spock and Uhura becoming intimately involved (though I did perform a truly earth-shattering head-smack when Uhura looked longingly into Spock's eyes and told him "I will be monitoring your communication frequencies" as though she had just said "love means never having to say you're sorry"). I don't even mind the fact that the Death Star somehow missed Alderan and instead destroyed planet Vulcan, or at least I don't mind it for fanboy reasons.
What I do mind is that it's a bad story. In fact, it's a fractally bad story. Just when you think you've found every plot hole, every ludicrous motivation, a closer look at one reveals a dozen more. It's like the Madelbrot set of incompetance (Just so you know, I may have "unconsciously" borrowed this metaphor from SFDebris).
Just to list off things as they come to me, in case this didn't look enough like a rant:
The main villain, Nero, is driven to genocidal rage by the fact that his homeworld, Romulus, has been destroyed by a supernova. He directs this rage, specifically, at Spock, and more generally at the Federation for failing to save his homeworld.
First of all. . . this was Spock's plan. He, personally (what, did they run out of red-shirts?), will pilot a small ship into the doomed Romulan star. Right at the moment it explodes, Spock will release a strange substance called Red Matter (or as I call it, Red Bull) that will magically, and I mean magically, create a black hole that will suck up the exploding remnants and save Romulus. . . at least until the planet freezes thanks to the lack of a life-sustaining sun (hat-tip to Spoony).
Now. . . as both a lapsed Trekkie and a masters student in physics, I know that Star Trek has frequently raped humankind's vast knowledge of science for the purpose of cheap story-telling. But I couldn't let this slide. Besides, I'd like to beat SFDebris to the punch for once in pointing out a huge scientific boo-boo. Here's my first problem with the whole create a black hole to suck up the supernova: when a star goes supernova, quite often IT CREATES A BLACK HOLE! That's where black holes come from! Supermassive stars are the stars that undergo supernova. It is these stars that have the mass required to collapse into a singularity. So what makes Spock think that creating a black hole will suck back the exploding stellar remants? In countless supernovae, it's never happened before. . . why would it work this time?
Okay, okay, you might argue that Spock will just use the Red Bull to create a more powerful black hole, one of those million solar mass monsters that will easily suck back the star in on itself. Even if you ignore what effect this would have on Romlulus (the planet we're trying to save, remember?), there's that pesky matter of, you know, the million solar masses! Hell, forget a million masses, what about the minimum 1.4 to 3 solar masses needed to form a black hole? Are you just gonna store it in the trunk? Well, I hope you have pretty big trunk, at least as big as the minimum Schwartzchild radius of 4 to 10 km needed to contain your not-yet-a-black-hole on your way to Romulus.
But on to the plot. . . Spock arrives at Romulus too late, and the star explodes-- cause, you know, scientists can't predict which stars will go supernova many millions of years in advance or anything like that. Still, Spock, not wanting to let perfectly good Red Bull go waste, decides to release it. . . or at least a very small part of it. I don't know. Anyway, this creates a black hole and, funny thing about black holes, they pull things in, and soon Spock finds his ship in an inescapible free fall of death. And so too, convineintly, does the ship belonging to the aforementioned bad guy, Nero.
But as it turns out, Red Bull, in addition to magically creating black holes and giving you wings, also causes time travel. Thus, both Spock and Nero plus crew are sucked over a century back in time to before the events depecited in the original Star Trek series. Actually, to more accurate than this film deserves, the two are launched to different times, twenty-five years apart. This, by the way, is not revealed at the beginning of the movie, but rather right smack in the middle, by means of the Vulcan exposition meld. . . but more on that later.
Nero and his massive ship arrive right in front of the Federation starship Kelvin. This is where the movie begins, and it's at this point that some reviewer, I think Spoony again, asks a good question: What was a Federation starship doing in the Romulan system at this time? I mean, even if you don't know that the Federation and the Romulans were in a centuries long state of cold war. . . there is no explanation given for this. In fact, there's no indication given that they're even at Romulus. And if they're not at Romulus, what is Nero doing there? Anyway, Nero's ship, the Narada or Ramada or Nirvana or something like that, does what any good Star Trek villain does-- he opens fire on the Kelvin after the Kelvin attempts to hail them. Now, knowing what I've already told you, you know that this makes absolutely no sense, but as I already mentioned, what I've already told you about Nero's situation and motivations isn't revealed until the middle of the movie. What that means is that the first time viewer has no way to know how stupid this is until the end of the movie. This goes beyond mere incompetence and into the realm of dishonesty, as though the writers knew how moronic this was and, instead of trying to create a plot that makes sense, instead just tried to cover it up with bad non-linear exposition.
So Nero orders the captain of the Kelvin aboard and starts asking him questions. Again, Nero has no reason to know that he's travelled back in time. . . and yet the second question he asks of the Kelvin's captain is "what stardate is it?" When the Kelvin's captain answers, Nero flies into a rage and kills him, and then proceeds to destroy the Kelvin. When I saw this in the theatre, my first thought was that Nero has deliberately travelled back in time to kick ass, but has arrived at the wrong date. That would explain Nero's question about the stardate, as well as why he was attacking the Kelvin. Looking back, I seriously wonder whether the writers were just making this up as they went along.
(Just to nitpick-- we learn in the film that Nero's ship is mining vessal. . . what's a mining vessal doing armed to the teeth? To fight pirates? Maybe.)
So it turns out that the first officer and acting captain of the Kelvin is none other than George Kirk, father of James T. Kirk, who, in another amazing coincidence, was just being born right at the moment the Kelvin came under attack.
Why am I doing this?
So Captain (George) Kirk protects the fleeing crew of the Kelvin and, once they're safely out of range, slams the Kelvin into the Narada, a heroic sacrfice. . . preceded by an argument over what to name the newborn baby. I'm serious. George Kirk on the Kelvin, and, let's say Wheezy Kirk, on a fleeing shuttle, communicate via radio over what to name their son, right in the midst of battle.
So after destorying the Kelvin, Nero just. . . hangs around. For twenty-five years. Again, having no foreknowledge of his motivations or reasons for his current situation, I thought that maybe the damage caused by the Kelvin was so significant that it took twenty-five years to repair. But no. You see, he's been waiting for Spock. As I mentioned earlier, Spock and Nero arrive twenty-five years apart, and Nero has been waiting at the black hole, for Spock to come out. First. . . if he's been waiting there, how come no-one else found him? I mean, he destroyed a Federation vessal. Don't you think they'd send send the space marines to go looking for him? Second, even though he didn't know that he had even been sent back in time and even though he, presumably, knew nothing about the properties of Red Bull-- other than perhaps that it exists and makes black holes-- he actually mentions that, according to his calcuations, Spock should be coming out of the black hole (you know, the thing from which there is no escape!!!) at about this time. So what was he doing all this time? Coming up with his brilliant plan of. . . sigh, I'll get to that later. I mean, couldn't he have been trying to warn Romulus about thet Supernova that's about to engulf their world in century's time? But then again, everyone in this universe is so stupid they can't figure out that the Romulans' massive red-giant star that's produced an awful lot of carbon will probably go supernova. Maybe Nero just decided it was futile.
So, Spock arrives, Nero captures him, takes the Red Bull, and unleashes-- oh, Jesus fucking Christ in a bag-- his plan.
That's it. That's the plan. And we spend the whole movie following the crew of the Enterprise trying to stop it.
I haven't been focussing too much on the introduction of the crew because, to be fair, that part is handled okay. Not great, not even good, but okay. Okay, that is, save for one huge exception, which leads back to the Vulcan exposition meld I mentioned earlier.
Nero Arrives at Vulcan and drills his hole. Because most of the fleet is busy elsewhere, it's up the the newly minted cadets of Starfleet Academy to save Vulcan. Once everyone is aboard their assgined ship, they fly off to Vulcan. . . except for the Enterprise. For the purposes of this film, Sulu, the pilot, is an idiot. An idiot who can handle a sword real nice, but an idiot nonetheless. You, see, Sulu forgot to turn off the "external inertial dampener," which prevents the Enterprise from reaching warp. Seriously, "external inertial dampener?" That's as stupid as calling something an "inert reactant." Anyway, they arrive, find all the other ships blown up, and are attacked by Nero. Nero is about to about to destory the ship, when. . .
As he did with the Kelvin, Nero orders the Enterprise's captain, Christopher Pike, aboard his ship. Capatin Pike orders young Spock, ie the one just out of Starfleet Academy serving on the newly commissioned Enterprise, to serve as acting Captain. He then orders Kirk to serve as first officer. . . which is weird because he had to sneak aboard the Enterprise with Dr. McCoy's help and. . . you know what, never mind. Spock takes command, Captain Pike goes to Nero's ship, and Kirk and Sulu do the flashy oribtal skydiving thing onto the aforementioned platform and accomplish nothing of consequence.
Nero then drops the Red Bull into the Planet's core. Vulcan starts imploding, and Spock beams down to the surface to rescue a small council of Vulcans responsible for the preservation of Vulcan's cultural heritage. As the planet is imploding, the council is hiding in a transporter-impermeable fortress. All six of them. There are a couple of things to nitpick here. First, are they just keeping all that culture in their heads? That, strangely, would made a weird sort of sense; we already know that Vulcan's had pass their essense or Katra from one individual to another, and it might make sense for culture to be passed on in the same way. Unfortunately, this is never explained. Second, and this relates to the chain of events leading back to the Vulcan exposition meld, Spock's mother is there. Now, I presume the reason for that is because Sarek, Spock's father, is on the cultural heritage council, and spouses of council members, for whatever reason, allowed into the cultrual fortress of logitude where they're all hiding. Still, it seems strange, given events earlier in the film, that she'd be allowed in there. Spock was tormented endlessly as a child for having a Vulcan mother. They even called Sarek a "traitor" for marrying a human. And yet this same apparently threatening human is now allowed into the vault containing, presumably, the very essence of Vulcan culture?
But anyway, Spock's mother and father are kneeling in the Fortress of Logitude-- apparently their plan was to just sit out the destruction of their planet. Spock brings them out into the open and orders a transport. Unfortunately, due to surface instability, the Enterprise fails to beam up Spock's mother from Vulcan. You gotta love the false moral equivalence on display. An enitre planet, aand its six billion inhabitants, are wiped in in a span of minutes. Men, women, and children, all extinguished. But what's really bad is that Spock lost his mother! I guess the writers though audiences couldn't possibly relate to mass genocide. . . so they decided instead that they could relate to the death of their Winona Ryder looking mother.
So, naturally, Spock is a little pissed off, though being a Vulcan he handles it well, or seem it seems at first. Unfortunately, his fellow cadet-turned-crewmate, James T. Kirk, has been giving Spock shit over the decisions he's made. Spock, understandably, orders Kirk removed from the bridge. Kirk then fights backs against the officers asked to remove him, and Spock nerve piches him, rendering him unconscious. Again, all well and good. Then Spock says this:
"Get him off my ship."
Wait. . . what? "Get him off my ship", not "Throw him in the brig"? Immediately we see Kirk marooned on some ice planet with minimal supplies. The computer aboard his space pod makes some excuse about how there's a Federation outpost fourteen miles away, but see. . . it's an ice planet. An ice planet that turns out to have ice fucking dragons that try to eat Kirk, and nearly succeed. There is no way Spock couldn't have known that it was dangerous to send Kirk down there, but he did it anyway. This relates to yet another a stupid plot point which I will get to later.
So Kirk is eventually chased into an ice cave by the aforementioned ice fucking dragon and is about be devoured when all of a sudden the dragon is chased away by a man with a torch. The man turns around and reveals himself to be none other than. . . future Spock! That's right, my friends! Nero happened to maroon Spock on the very same planet that younger Spock would later maroon Kirk. Not only that, they were marooned within a fucking ten-mile radius! How overly convenient it that?!
So Spock greets Kirk, with an allusion to an earlier movie. Not, "Jim. . . your name is Jim," (or maybe he did say that, I don't remember) but "I have been and always shall be your friend." I remember him saying that because it felt just so damn out of place in this context. You do not say something like "I have been and always shall be your friend" as a greeting, but as a parting. That's why it worked so well in Star Trek II when Spock was dying, and why it just feels awkward here.
Anyway, Spock reveals that he is, in fact Spock, from the future. The conversation that follows, as usual, is utterly idiotic.
Why? Who knows.
"But how can I do that?" asks Kirk.
"You must show that is showing emotional distress which makes him unfit for command."
Ah. Do you mean the kind of emotional distress that would prompt him to abandon Kirk on a deadly planet with few supplies and no defences?
Anyway, they go to the Federation outpost, meet Scotty, and teach him about his own invention of transwarp transporting or some such. Kirk and Scotty then beam aboard the Enterprise, leaving Spock behind. They could have kept this simple, but nooooooo. They had to be funny. When they arrive, Kirk is just fine, but Scotty, he's. . . *snicker* . . . he's trapped in a tank of. . . "inert reactant"! And then. . . *snicker* he's pumped along a series of pipes! Ha ha ha ha! He's pounding on the pipe walls and Kirk is running after him, trying to save him fron drowning! Hahahahahaha! And then, Kirk, *snicker*, Kirk pulls an emergency release, and Scotty falls fifty feet onto a hard floor! And the best part is that this scene served absolutely no purpose to the overall story! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, fuck you.
So anyway, Kirk and Scotty are captured and brought to the bridge, and Spock asks how they were able to beam aboard. Kirk decides this is the ideal moment to provoke Spock into anger and thus show he is to emotionally unstable for command. He does this by. . . berating him about his lack of emotional response over his mother's death and the near extinction of his race. Well, it does the trick, and Spock proceeds to beat the living snot outta Kirk. Spock ends up nearly strangling Kirk to death, only to pull back and declare himself unfit for duty. Wow, it happened just like Spock said it would. It's almost as if everyone were following a really hackeneyed script.
So, with Spock relieving himself, Kirk crowns himself, Napoleon-like, as the captain of the Enterprise. And what does he do with this newfound authority? He beams over to Nero's ship, leaving Chekov, fucking Chekov, in charge. Is there no chain of command here? And of course, because we need these two to be friends again, Spock decides to join him on his little away mission.
So they beam aboard, some stupid action sequences ensue, and Kirk and Spock destroy Nero's ship with Red Bull. They return to Starfleet academy, Kirk earns a commendation and, I swear to fucking God, is instantaneously promoted to captain of the Enterprise! There really is no chain of fucking command! And to top it off, Spock comes aboard and requests a position as first officer. Kirk replies, saying he would be "honored." This is supposed to be touching, but it just feels cheap. This friendship was not earned in any way. One minute they're rivals, the next minute they're friends. Why? Because that's what the script needed to happen.
The Enterprise flies off into the unknown, its crew united, with Leonard Nimoy narrating the famous Star Trek opening, as he did in Star Trek II.
And that's it.
If you've made it all the way through this long-winded rant, I defy you to still tell me that Star Trek was a good movie. In fact. . . could you explain to me what you saw in it? Please? I mean, this movie makes the Star Wars Prequels look good. It makes M. Night Shayamalan look. . . better. I mean, you hate the Star Wars prequels, and you hate M. Night. What do you see in this? Please tell me! And if you didn't like it, for reasons other than fanboy BS, please let me know as well. Me and ConfusedMatthew can't be the only ones out there.
Until then. . . live long and . . . on second thought, don't.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
Fuck all of you.
Fuck you, The Onion. Fuck you, Saturday Night Live (fuck you twice for not allowing videos to be shown in Canada from nbc.com and then filing a copyright clain against Youtube.com for showing the same video!). Fuck you, Spill.com. Fuck you Leonard Nimoy.
And fuck you*.
*If applicable. Otherwise, have a good day.
Fuck you for buying into this ridiculous lie, that if someone doesn't like the new Star Trek movie. . . it's okay. It's not because it's a bad movie. It's because it's a great movie, and the only people who would be dumb enough to complain about it are those closed minded, continuity horny Trekkies. That's right, only the hard core losers who never moved out of their parent's basement would dislike this movie. Those pathetic losers don't realize what their missing out on. It's not our (ie. your) problem, it's their's.
Now that I've undoubtably won you over. . . what did I think?
Star Trek is a bad movie. It's not
I'm stressing this because I truly believe that the fact of Star Trek the movie's badness is something objective. It does not rest on your being or not being a Trekkie. Everyone, of all colors and creeds, should be able to see how bad this movie is with but a little bit of thought. This film is borne of a suckiness that transcends barriers of (sub-)culture, the kind of badness that, I had hoped, would touch the very depths of our common humanity.
But no. I was wrong. 96% wrong.
Sigh.
It's not the changes that bother me. I don't mind the parallel universe time altering thing. I don't mind the new design of the Enterprise. I don't mind new actors-- in fact, I thought Karl Urban and Simon Pegg were great in this film. I don't mind a more emotional Spock, and I don't mind Spock and Uhura becoming intimately involved (though I did perform a truly earth-shattering head-smack when Uhura looked longingly into Spock's eyes and told him "I will be monitoring your communication frequencies" as though she had just said "love means never having to say you're sorry"). I don't even mind the fact that the Death Star somehow missed Alderan and instead destroyed planet Vulcan, or at least I don't mind it for fanboy reasons.
What I do mind is that it's a bad story. In fact, it's a fractally bad story. Just when you think you've found every plot hole, every ludicrous motivation, a closer look at one reveals a dozen more. It's like the Madelbrot set of incompetance (Just so you know, I may have "unconsciously" borrowed this metaphor from SFDebris).
Just to list off things as they come to me, in case this didn't look enough like a rant:
The main villain, Nero, is driven to genocidal rage by the fact that his homeworld, Romulus, has been destroyed by a supernova. He directs this rage, specifically, at Spock, and more generally at the Federation for failing to save his homeworld.
First of all. . . this was Spock's plan. He, personally (what, did they run out of red-shirts?), will pilot a small ship into the doomed Romulan star. Right at the moment it explodes, Spock will release a strange substance called Red Matter (or as I call it, Red Bull) that will magically, and I mean magically, create a black hole that will suck up the exploding remnants and save Romulus. . . at least until the planet freezes thanks to the lack of a life-sustaining sun (hat-tip to Spoony).
Now. . . as both a lapsed Trekkie and a masters student in physics, I know that Star Trek has frequently raped humankind's vast knowledge of science for the purpose of cheap story-telling. But I couldn't let this slide. Besides, I'd like to beat SFDebris to the punch for once in pointing out a huge scientific boo-boo. Here's my first problem with the whole create a black hole to suck up the supernova: when a star goes supernova, quite often IT CREATES A BLACK HOLE! That's where black holes come from! Supermassive stars are the stars that undergo supernova. It is these stars that have the mass required to collapse into a singularity. So what makes Spock think that creating a black hole will suck back the exploding stellar remants? In countless supernovae, it's never happened before. . . why would it work this time?
Okay, okay, you might argue that Spock will just use the Red Bull to create a more powerful black hole, one of those million solar mass monsters that will easily suck back the star in on itself. Even if you ignore what effect this would have on Romlulus (the planet we're trying to save, remember?), there's that pesky matter of, you know, the million solar masses! Hell, forget a million masses, what about the minimum 1.4 to 3 solar masses needed to form a black hole? Are you just gonna store it in the trunk? Well, I hope you have pretty big trunk, at least as big as the minimum Schwartzchild radius of 4 to 10 km needed to contain your not-yet-a-black-hole on your way to Romulus.
But on to the plot. . . Spock arrives at Romulus too late, and the star explodes-- cause, you know, scientists can't predict which stars will go supernova many millions of years in advance or anything like that. Still, Spock, not wanting to let perfectly good Red Bull go waste, decides to release it. . . or at least a very small part of it. I don't know. Anyway, this creates a black hole and, funny thing about black holes, they pull things in, and soon Spock finds his ship in an inescapible free fall of death. And so too, convineintly, does the ship belonging to the aforementioned bad guy, Nero.
But as it turns out, Red Bull, in addition to magically creating black holes and giving you wings, also causes time travel. Thus, both Spock and Nero plus crew are sucked over a century back in time to before the events depecited in the original Star Trek series. Actually, to more accurate than this film deserves, the two are launched to different times, twenty-five years apart. This, by the way, is not revealed at the beginning of the movie, but rather right smack in the middle, by means of the Vulcan exposition meld. . . but more on that later.
Nero and his massive ship arrive right in front of the Federation starship Kelvin. This is where the movie begins, and it's at this point that some reviewer, I think Spoony again, asks a good question: What was a Federation starship doing in the Romulan system at this time? I mean, even if you don't know that the Federation and the Romulans were in a centuries long state of cold war. . . there is no explanation given for this. In fact, there's no indication given that they're even at Romulus. And if they're not at Romulus, what is Nero doing there? Anyway, Nero's ship, the Narada or Ramada or Nirvana or something like that, does what any good Star Trek villain does-- he opens fire on the Kelvin after the Kelvin attempts to hail them. Now, knowing what I've already told you, you know that this makes absolutely no sense, but as I already mentioned, what I've already told you about Nero's situation and motivations isn't revealed until the middle of the movie. What that means is that the first time viewer has no way to know how stupid this is until the end of the movie. This goes beyond mere incompetence and into the realm of dishonesty, as though the writers knew how moronic this was and, instead of trying to create a plot that makes sense, instead just tried to cover it up with bad non-linear exposition.
So Nero orders the captain of the Kelvin aboard and starts asking him questions. Again, Nero has no reason to know that he's travelled back in time. . . and yet the second question he asks of the Kelvin's captain is "what stardate is it?" When the Kelvin's captain answers, Nero flies into a rage and kills him, and then proceeds to destroy the Kelvin. When I saw this in the theatre, my first thought was that Nero has deliberately travelled back in time to kick ass, but has arrived at the wrong date. That would explain Nero's question about the stardate, as well as why he was attacking the Kelvin. Looking back, I seriously wonder whether the writers were just making this up as they went along.
(Just to nitpick-- we learn in the film that Nero's ship is mining vessal. . . what's a mining vessal doing armed to the teeth? To fight pirates? Maybe.)
So it turns out that the first officer and acting captain of the Kelvin is none other than George Kirk, father of James T. Kirk, who, in another amazing coincidence, was just being born right at the moment the Kelvin came under attack.
Why am I doing this?
So Captain (George) Kirk protects the fleeing crew of the Kelvin and, once they're safely out of range, slams the Kelvin into the Narada, a heroic sacrfice. . . preceded by an argument over what to name the newborn baby. I'm serious. George Kirk on the Kelvin, and, let's say Wheezy Kirk, on a fleeing shuttle, communicate via radio over what to name their son, right in the midst of battle.
"Let's name his after your father, George!"
"Wheezy, no son of mine is going to walk around with the name Tiberius!"
"George!"
"Wheezy!"
"George, I don't care if you're about to crash into that Romulan death star, we are going to pick a name for your son!"
"Fine. We'll name him after your father, James."
"My Father's name is Jean-Luc. . ."
Kelvin smashes into Narada. The theme song starts.
Movin' on up
To the east side
To a deluxe apartment in the sky
Mov-movin' on up
To the east side
We finally got a piece of the pie!
So after destorying the Kelvin, Nero just. . . hangs around. For twenty-five years. Again, having no foreknowledge of his motivations or reasons for his current situation, I thought that maybe the damage caused by the Kelvin was so significant that it took twenty-five years to repair. But no. You see, he's been waiting for Spock. As I mentioned earlier, Spock and Nero arrive twenty-five years apart, and Nero has been waiting at the black hole, for Spock to come out. First. . . if he's been waiting there, how come no-one else found him? I mean, he destroyed a Federation vessal. Don't you think they'd send send the space marines to go looking for him? Second, even though he didn't know that he had even been sent back in time and even though he, presumably, knew nothing about the properties of Red Bull-- other than perhaps that it exists and makes black holes-- he actually mentions that, according to his calcuations, Spock should be coming out of the black hole (you know, the thing from which there is no escape!!!) at about this time. So what was he doing all this time? Coming up with his brilliant plan of. . . sigh, I'll get to that later. I mean, couldn't he have been trying to warn Romulus about thet Supernova that's about to engulf their world in century's time? But then again, everyone in this universe is so stupid they can't figure out that the Romulans' massive red-giant star that's produced an awful lot of carbon will probably go supernova. Maybe Nero just decided it was futile.
So, Spock arrives, Nero captures him, takes the Red Bull, and unleashes-- oh, Jesus fucking Christ in a bag-- his plan.
"It's very simple, Mr. Spock," says Nero, stroking his Romulan British Shorthaired Cat. "I cannot save Romulus, for reasons neither of us could possibly comprehend. So I will do the next best thing. . . I will destroy each and every planet in the Federation! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
"Yure Inshane, Neroh," says Spock, speaking, for reasons known only to him, with a lisp and Scottish accent. "To do that, you would need a firepower greater than half the Starfleet!"
"That is where you are wrong, Spock! You underestimate the power of the Red Bull! I will use this mining ship to drill a hole to the core of the planet. Then, I will drop a small bit of Red Bull into the core, causing a massive singularity that will envelop the planet! And since you were packing enough Red Bull to collpase a supermassive star, I will have more that enough to destory every single planet in the Federation!"
"But that makes no sense! We tried to help you!"
"And you failed!"
"Well sorry! Last time we try to help the Romulans. Sheesh. And besides, I've seen that drill! All anyone would have to do is shoot it off from a distance."
"Wrong again! I will block all transporters and communications!"
"But what does that have to do with--?"
"The only way to stop the jamming signal would be for a small group of soldiers to skydive from space onto a small platform and destroy it, and no-one would dare try anything that stupid!"
"Do you expect me to believe this cockamamee plan, Goldfing-- I mean Nero?"
"No, Mr. Spock. I expect you to die. . . with a guilty conscience! You see, I will leave you behind on an ice planet, near the desert planet of-- wait, ice planet near a desert planet, (sigh) whatever-- and make you watch!"
"What do you mean 'watch'?"
"I think it's time we demonstrated the full power of this Red Bull. So your course for Vulcan!"
"No! Vulcan is peaceful! We have no weapons, you can't possibly--"
"Would you prefer another target? A military target? Then name the system! I grow tired of asking this so it will be the last time: Where is the rebel base?"
That's it. That's the plan. And we spend the whole movie following the crew of the Enterprise trying to stop it.
I haven't been focussing too much on the introduction of the crew because, to be fair, that part is handled okay. Not great, not even good, but okay. Okay, that is, save for one huge exception, which leads back to the Vulcan exposition meld I mentioned earlier.
Nero Arrives at Vulcan and drills his hole. Because most of the fleet is busy elsewhere, it's up the the newly minted cadets of Starfleet Academy to save Vulcan. Once everyone is aboard their assgined ship, they fly off to Vulcan. . . except for the Enterprise. For the purposes of this film, Sulu, the pilot, is an idiot. An idiot who can handle a sword real nice, but an idiot nonetheless. You, see, Sulu forgot to turn off the "external inertial dampener," which prevents the Enterprise from reaching warp. Seriously, "external inertial dampener?" That's as stupid as calling something an "inert reactant." Anyway, they arrive, find all the other ships blown up, and are attacked by Nero. Nero is about to about to destory the ship, when. . .
"Wait!" says Nero. "Zoom in on that ship!"
The screen zooms on the ship, revealing its name-- Enterprise.
"Ah, yes," says Nero. "Finally, my chance. . . for revenge."
"Revenge," says General Zod.
"Revenge!" says Ursa.
"REVENGE!" says Lex Luthor. "Now we're cooking!"
As he did with the Kelvin, Nero orders the Enterprise's captain, Christopher Pike, aboard his ship. Capatin Pike orders young Spock, ie the one just out of Starfleet Academy serving on the newly commissioned Enterprise, to serve as acting Captain. He then orders Kirk to serve as first officer. . . which is weird because he had to sneak aboard the Enterprise with Dr. McCoy's help and. . . you know what, never mind. Spock takes command, Captain Pike goes to Nero's ship, and Kirk and Sulu do the flashy oribtal skydiving thing onto the aforementioned platform and accomplish nothing of consequence.
Nero then drops the Red Bull into the Planet's core. Vulcan starts imploding, and Spock beams down to the surface to rescue a small council of Vulcans responsible for the preservation of Vulcan's cultural heritage. As the planet is imploding, the council is hiding in a transporter-impermeable fortress. All six of them. There are a couple of things to nitpick here. First, are they just keeping all that culture in their heads? That, strangely, would made a weird sort of sense; we already know that Vulcan's had pass their essense or Katra from one individual to another, and it might make sense for culture to be passed on in the same way. Unfortunately, this is never explained. Second, and this relates to the chain of events leading back to the Vulcan exposition meld, Spock's mother is there. Now, I presume the reason for that is because Sarek, Spock's father, is on the cultural heritage council, and spouses of council members, for whatever reason, allowed into the cultrual fortress of logitude where they're all hiding. Still, it seems strange, given events earlier in the film, that she'd be allowed in there. Spock was tormented endlessly as a child for having a Vulcan mother. They even called Sarek a "traitor" for marrying a human. And yet this same apparently threatening human is now allowed into the vault containing, presumably, the very essence of Vulcan culture?
But anyway, Spock's mother and father are kneeling in the Fortress of Logitude-- apparently their plan was to just sit out the destruction of their planet. Spock brings them out into the open and orders a transport. Unfortunately, due to surface instability, the Enterprise fails to beam up Spock's mother from Vulcan. You gotta love the false moral equivalence on display. An enitre planet, aand its six billion inhabitants, are wiped in in a span of minutes. Men, women, and children, all extinguished. But what's really bad is that Spock lost his mother! I guess the writers though audiences couldn't possibly relate to mass genocide. . . so they decided instead that they could relate to the death of their Winona Ryder looking mother.
So, naturally, Spock is a little pissed off, though being a Vulcan he handles it well, or seem it seems at first. Unfortunately, his fellow cadet-turned-crewmate, James T. Kirk, has been giving Spock shit over the decisions he's made. Spock, understandably, orders Kirk removed from the bridge. Kirk then fights backs against the officers asked to remove him, and Spock nerve piches him, rendering him unconscious. Again, all well and good. Then Spock says this:
"Get him off my ship."
Wait. . . what? "Get him off my ship", not "Throw him in the brig"? Immediately we see Kirk marooned on some ice planet with minimal supplies. The computer aboard his space pod makes some excuse about how there's a Federation outpost fourteen miles away, but see. . . it's an ice planet. An ice planet that turns out to have ice fucking dragons that try to eat Kirk, and nearly succeed. There is no way Spock couldn't have known that it was dangerous to send Kirk down there, but he did it anyway. This relates to yet another a stupid plot point which I will get to later.
So Kirk is eventually chased into an ice cave by the aforementioned ice fucking dragon and is about be devoured when all of a sudden the dragon is chased away by a man with a torch. The man turns around and reveals himself to be none other than. . . future Spock! That's right, my friends! Nero happened to maroon Spock on the very same planet that younger Spock would later maroon Kirk. Not only that, they were marooned within a fucking ten-mile radius! How overly convenient it that?!
So Spock greets Kirk, with an allusion to an earlier movie. Not, "Jim. . . your name is Jim," (or maybe he did say that, I don't remember) but "I have been and always shall be your friend." I remember him saying that because it felt just so damn out of place in this context. You do not say something like "I have been and always shall be your friend" as a greeting, but as a parting. That's why it worked so well in Star Trek II when Spock was dying, and why it just feels awkward here.
Anyway, Spock reveals that he is, in fact Spock, from the future. The conversation that follows, as usual, is utterly idiotic.
"I'm Spock," says Spock.How do you know about Nero? Fuck that! How do you know who I am? How do you know Spock? Anyhoo, we proceed with the Vulcan exposition meld and Spock then tells Kirk "You must get Spock to relieve his command."
"No way," says Kirk.
"I am. And you're James Kirk."
"Whatever."
"I'm from the future. That's why I look like an older version of the Spock you know." (Just go with it.)
"Pssshh."
"I was brought here by Nero."
Kirk looks back at Spock with a sudden somber seriousness.
"How do you know about Nero?"
Why? Who knows.
"But how can I do that?" asks Kirk.
"You must show that is showing emotional distress which makes him unfit for command."
Ah. Do you mean the kind of emotional distress that would prompt him to abandon Kirk on a deadly planet with few supplies and no defences?
Anyway, they go to the Federation outpost, meet Scotty, and teach him about his own invention of transwarp transporting or some such. Kirk and Scotty then beam aboard the Enterprise, leaving Spock behind. They could have kept this simple, but nooooooo. They had to be funny. When they arrive, Kirk is just fine, but Scotty, he's. . . *snicker* . . . he's trapped in a tank of. . . "inert reactant"! And then. . . *snicker* he's pumped along a series of pipes! Ha ha ha ha! He's pounding on the pipe walls and Kirk is running after him, trying to save him fron drowning! Hahahahahaha! And then, Kirk, *snicker*, Kirk pulls an emergency release, and Scotty falls fifty feet onto a hard floor! And the best part is that this scene served absolutely no purpose to the overall story! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, fuck you.
So anyway, Kirk and Scotty are captured and brought to the bridge, and Spock asks how they were able to beam aboard. Kirk decides this is the ideal moment to provoke Spock into anger and thus show he is to emotionally unstable for command. He does this by. . . berating him about his lack of emotional response over his mother's death and the near extinction of his race. Well, it does the trick, and Spock proceeds to beat the living snot outta Kirk. Spock ends up nearly strangling Kirk to death, only to pull back and declare himself unfit for duty. Wow, it happened just like Spock said it would. It's almost as if everyone were following a really hackeneyed script.
So, with Spock relieving himself, Kirk crowns himself, Napoleon-like, as the captain of the Enterprise. And what does he do with this newfound authority? He beams over to Nero's ship, leaving Chekov, fucking Chekov, in charge. Is there no chain of command here? And of course, because we need these two to be friends again, Spock decides to join him on his little away mission.
"Say, sorry about saying that you don't love your mother and aren't saddened by your species' near annihilation."
"No worries. Sorry about nearly killing you in a fit of rage."
"You know what I say? That's why pencils have erasers!"
So they beam aboard, some stupid action sequences ensue, and Kirk and Spock destroy Nero's ship with Red Bull. They return to Starfleet academy, Kirk earns a commendation and, I swear to fucking God, is instantaneously promoted to captain of the Enterprise! There really is no chain of fucking command! And to top it off, Spock comes aboard and requests a position as first officer. Kirk replies, saying he would be "honored." This is supposed to be touching, but it just feels cheap. This friendship was not earned in any way. One minute they're rivals, the next minute they're friends. Why? Because that's what the script needed to happen.
The Enterprise flies off into the unknown, its crew united, with Leonard Nimoy narrating the famous Star Trek opening, as he did in Star Trek II.
And that's it.
If you've made it all the way through this long-winded rant, I defy you to still tell me that Star Trek was a good movie. In fact. . . could you explain to me what you saw in it? Please? I mean, this movie makes the Star Wars Prequels look good. It makes M. Night Shayamalan look. . . better. I mean, you hate the Star Wars prequels, and you hate M. Night. What do you see in this? Please tell me! And if you didn't like it, for reasons other than fanboy BS, please let me know as well. Me and ConfusedMatthew can't be the only ones out there.
Until then. . . live long and . . . on second thought, don't.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Lab
I'm in my Phys 111 lab. It's 7:50 pm and I'm not leaving until around 9:30. It's hard going. I mangled my introduction to the lab because I was tired and didn't prepare and basically just didn't give a shit. As a result, I think a couple of students laughed at me, and frankly, I can't blame them. On top of that, I'm also marking labs for Christine, the senior lab instructor. She's telling me that I have to "get mean," which means, in part, that I'll have to be even more vigilant in identifying mistakes than I already am, which means even more work. Either that, or I'll just have to take off more points for the same mistakes, which is easier, but not neccessarily fair to the students.
Labs. My "fuck that guy" of the evening.
(This does not bode well for me if I'm selected by JET to teach English in Japan. Come to think of it, that would have been an interesting blog topic. Way better than bitching about the shitty commercials done by my make-believe Japanese girlfriend.)
Labs. My "fuck that guy" of the evening.
(This does not bode well for me if I'm selected by JET to teach English in Japan. Come to think of it, that would have been an interesting blog topic. Way better than bitching about the shitty commercials done by my make-believe Japanese girlfriend.)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Miyuu Afterwards, or, YOU USED TO BE SAILOR MOON, GODDAMMIT!!!
Click here. You'll find a video. Don't worry, it won't take too much of your time.
Did you notice the tiny woman on the left about ten seconds in? You know, the one showing off the latest in Japanese corporate homogenization, performing a modeling task one or two small steps above that of your typical Sears mannequin?
Look at it again, if you missed it.
You'd never guess that woman used to be Sailor Moon. You know, one of the most popular Japanese heros of all time.
And now she's pitching suits.
Okay, okay, you're thinking "It's not that bad." (Or "Christ, here he goes with Miyuu Fucking Sawai again. Get a girlfriend, you fucking loser.") It's certainly not the lowest to which Miyuu Sawai has ever stooped. I already showed you the PGSM toy commercials, but even that's not so bad, she was the star of her own TV show at the time.
But the next thing I'm going to show you. . . there's just no excuse.
Just in case it doesn't show, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7ZRoeYJKY
This commercial, first aired in 2007, did indeed star the one and only Homer Simpson. . . in Miyuu Sawai's mouth. The saddest thing is that as weird as this commercial is, it doesn't even have the benefit of being that unique, Japanese sort of weird. It's a bland, commercialist, acultural, boring kind of weird.
But it's not even the corporate aspect that bugs me. I mean, there are plenty of successful actors who do commercials. Like this one:
Sure, the Commodore Vic-20 has "a real computer keyboard," but that's not what made it "The Wonder Computer of the 1980s" TM.
No, it was William Shatner. By mere whim, Shatner took some hunk of ugly plastic with a five kilobyte memory and declared that for the remainder of an entire decade, no other computer shall surpass it Wonder-ness. He made the Vic-20.
And that's the difference. The Vic-20 commercial was really an advertisement not of a computer, but of the awesomeness that is Shatner. It's really his way of saying "I made it."
On the other hand, Sawai's commercials seem like a retreat back to anonymity. In both cases she's secondary to the product. The suit commercial's focus is on the spokeswoman, who in turn is directing the viewer's attention not to Sawai but to her clothes. The donut commercial features an extreme close-up of Sawai's visage, and even then, even then, she's upstaged by a freakin' cartoon. IN HER OWN MOUTH!
The weird thing is, before a couple of days ago, I thought I had made peace with donut commercial. The year 2008 was relatively good for Sawai. She landed a small roll in the film Shaolin Girl, a Japanese pseudo-sequel to Shaolin Soccer. She also co-hosted an educational series for NHK called "French TV" (at least I think that's how it translates), which as its name suggests is focused on teaching French to Japanese speakers. I would have loved to have found some clips from the show, but so far I've not had any luck.
On top of this, she did a few TV guest roles. My favourite out of all of these-- and the one for which it was easiest to get clips-- was her appearance as a bicycle delivery girl on the series Tomika Hero Rescue Force, a show that manages to make PGSM look subtle and restrained by comparison.
The episode was uploaded in three parts; I've put up the second part below. The best scene starts at about seven minutes in.
For whatever reason, that scene always reminds me this classic movie moment:
While some people-- those lacking vision-- would call that bike leap scene moronic, you can't deny that it's a huge step up from smuggling an amorphous pirated copy of The Simpson's Movie inside one's mouth. And you can't deny that that clothing ad was a step down. Unless you're talking in terms of good taste, in which case, why are you reading this blog?
I don't know quite how to close this entry in any logical way, so I'll just conclude with another reference to Yor: The Hunter from the Future.
Did you notice the tiny woman on the left about ten seconds in? You know, the one showing off the latest in Japanese corporate homogenization, performing a modeling task one or two small steps above that of your typical Sears mannequin?
Look at it again, if you missed it.
You'd never guess that woman used to be Sailor Moon. You know, one of the most popular Japanese heros of all time.
And now she's pitching suits.
Okay, okay, you're thinking "It's not that bad." (Or "Christ, here he goes with Miyuu Fucking Sawai again. Get a girlfriend, you fucking loser.") It's certainly not the lowest to which Miyuu Sawai has ever stooped. I already showed you the PGSM toy commercials, but even that's not so bad, she was the star of her own TV show at the time.
But the next thing I'm going to show you. . . there's just no excuse.
Just in case it doesn't show, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7ZRoeYJKY
This commercial, first aired in 2007, did indeed star the one and only Homer Simpson. . . in Miyuu Sawai's mouth. The saddest thing is that as weird as this commercial is, it doesn't even have the benefit of being that unique, Japanese sort of weird. It's a bland, commercialist, acultural, boring kind of weird.
But it's not even the corporate aspect that bugs me. I mean, there are plenty of successful actors who do commercials. Like this one:
Denny Crane.
Sure, the Commodore Vic-20 has "a real computer keyboard," but that's not what made it "The Wonder Computer of the 1980s" TM.
No, it was William Shatner. By mere whim, Shatner took some hunk of ugly plastic with a five kilobyte memory and declared that for the remainder of an entire decade, no other computer shall surpass it Wonder-ness. He made the Vic-20.
And that's the difference. The Vic-20 commercial was really an advertisement not of a computer, but of the awesomeness that is Shatner. It's really his way of saying "I made it."
On the other hand, Sawai's commercials seem like a retreat back to anonymity. In both cases she's secondary to the product. The suit commercial's focus is on the spokeswoman, who in turn is directing the viewer's attention not to Sawai but to her clothes. The donut commercial features an extreme close-up of Sawai's visage, and even then, even then, she's upstaged by a freakin' cartoon. IN HER OWN MOUTH!
The weird thing is, before a couple of days ago, I thought I had made peace with donut commercial. The year 2008 was relatively good for Sawai. She landed a small roll in the film Shaolin Girl, a Japanese pseudo-sequel to Shaolin Soccer. She also co-hosted an educational series for NHK called "French TV" (at least I think that's how it translates), which as its name suggests is focused on teaching French to Japanese speakers. I would have loved to have found some clips from the show, but so far I've not had any luck.
On top of this, she did a few TV guest roles. My favourite out of all of these-- and the one for which it was easiest to get clips-- was her appearance as a bicycle delivery girl on the series Tomika Hero Rescue Force, a show that manages to make PGSM look subtle and restrained by comparison.
The episode was uploaded in three parts; I've put up the second part below. The best scene starts at about seven minutes in.
For whatever reason, that scene always reminds me this classic movie moment:
While some people-- those lacking vision-- would call that bike leap scene moronic, you can't deny that it's a huge step up from smuggling an amorphous pirated copy of The Simpson's Movie inside one's mouth. And you can't deny that that clothing ad was a step down. Unless you're talking in terms of good taste, in which case, why are you reading this blog?
I don't know quite how to close this entry in any logical way, so I'll just conclude with another reference to Yor: The Hunter from the Future.
Monday, December 15, 2008
On "equivocation". . .
A couple of weeks ago Naomi sent me a link to WWII era Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Great stuff. They even do the "What's Opera Doc?" parody of Wagner's Die Walküre, a decade before "What's Opera Doc?"
My enjoyment was tempered, however, upon reading one of the comments left in response to the video. First, I'll point out an earlier comment:
The comment that irritated me so much was in response to the one above:
Where do I begin?
Am I to take it that if there were only a few thousand Jews murdered by the Nazi's, then the Nazi's would somehow be less evil? Supposing that Hitler was utterly incompetent and allowed millions of Jews of escape from Europe-- does inability to perform evil acts make you less evil? Is the act of genocide somehow more tolerable if your killing off a small population rather than a large one? Would wiping out every Muslim or Catholic be more atrocious than wiping out every Jew just because there are a billion Muslims and Catholics and only millions of Jews?
Of course not.
As for that "lifestlye choice" comment (a common argument made by fundamentalist homophobes), many Nazis had a somewhat different view. From Wikipedia:
Anti-gay bigotry: An official member of my lifetime "Fuck Thats".
Great stuff. They even do the "What's Opera Doc?" parody of Wagner's Die Walküre, a decade before "What's Opera Doc?"
My enjoyment was tempered, however, upon reading one of the comments left in response to the video. First, I'll point out an earlier comment:
All U people that think that Hitler is good are the most horrible people in the planet.He killed mora than 1000 jews and homosexuals.You people wouldnt like him too kill all the people of your religon so Shut the f**k up kwgithoBad grammar and incorrect statistics aside, I do agree with the sentiment. Fuck Hitler, and fuck his modern-day admirers.
The comment that irritated me so much was in response to the one above:
He killed millions of Jews and thousands of Christians. Let's not equivocate the small percentile of homosexuals, which is a lifestyle preference, and though unfortunate, pales against the tragedy and degree of the Nazi's religious persecution.Hoooo-boy.
That said, I miss Looney Tunes.
Where do I begin?
Am I to take it that if there were only a few thousand Jews murdered by the Nazi's, then the Nazi's would somehow be less evil? Supposing that Hitler was utterly incompetent and allowed millions of Jews of escape from Europe-- does inability to perform evil acts make you less evil? Is the act of genocide somehow more tolerable if your killing off a small population rather than a large one? Would wiping out every Muslim or Catholic be more atrocious than wiping out every Jew just because there are a billion Muslims and Catholics and only millions of Jews?
Of course not.
As for that "lifestlye choice" comment (a common argument made by fundamentalist homophobes), many Nazis had a somewhat different view. From Wikipedia:
Nazi leaders such as Himmler viewed homosexuals as a separate people and ensured that Nazi doctors experimented on them in an effort to locate the hereditary weakness many party members believed caused homosexuality.I was going to point out the absurdity of dismissing homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice" while crying bloody murder over religious persecution-- as though religion isn't a lifestyle choice-- but in this particular instance, I knew it didn't apply. To the Nazis, the Jews were inherently degenerate-- conversion or apostacy solved nothing.
Anti-gay bigotry: An official member of my lifetime "Fuck Thats".
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Next Week?
Hi A.J.
I'm going to be pretty busy next week-- I have to attend a committee meeting and give my final presentation for my Octave course. But Friday night or Saturday should be good.
Would it be cool if Naomi came as well?
Oh. . . and for you other people reading this (and A.J. as well):
YOR!
(It's over twenty minutes long, but its worth it!)
I'm going to be pretty busy next week-- I have to attend a committee meeting and give my final presentation for my Octave course. But Friday night or Saturday should be good.
Would it be cool if Naomi came as well?
Oh. . . and for you other people reading this (and A.J. as well):
YOR!
(It's over twenty minutes long, but its worth it!)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Greatest Assignment Evarz!1!
One of my duties as a grad student is to mark undergraduate physics assignments. This is usually a pain in the ass, but every so often I get an assignment that not only sucks, but is actually entertaining.
In this case, it was a doodle in one of my Phys 111 assignments. It shows two situations, one in which two boys are writing on a chalkboard, and one in which one boy and one girl are writing on a chalkboard. In the first case, one of the boys has claimed that the indefinite integral of x^2 is Pi (it's not, just so you know). The other boy then says "Wow, you suck at math!"
In the other case, the girl has written the exact same thing. The boy in that case says "Wow, girls suck at math!"
Simple. Beautiful. And with logic perfectly applicable to many other situations.
For example:
(Note: Replace "The God Delusion" with "The Koran", "Atheists" with "Muslims" and, if you like, "Assholes" with "Terrorists" and it works just as well)
Or how about:
Don't you just love it when your entire worldview comes in "Fill-in-the-Blank" form?
In this case, it was a doodle in one of my Phys 111 assignments. It shows two situations, one in which two boys are writing on a chalkboard, and one in which one boy and one girl are writing on a chalkboard. In the first case, one of the boys has claimed that the indefinite integral of x^2 is Pi (it's not, just so you know). The other boy then says "Wow, you suck at math!"
In the other case, the girl has written the exact same thing. The boy in that case says "Wow, girls suck at math!"
Simple. Beautiful. And with logic perfectly applicable to many other situations.
For example:
#1
MAN HOLDING BIBLE KICKS PUPPY.
MAN #2: You're an asshole!
#2
MAN HOLDING THE GOD DELUSION KICKS PUPPY.
MAN #2: Atheists are assholes!
(Note: Replace "The God Delusion" with "The Koran", "Atheists" with "Muslims" and, if you like, "Assholes" with "Terrorists" and it works just as well)
Or how about:
#1
WHITE MAN ROBS BANK.
OLD WOMAN: What a horrid fellow!
#2
BLACK MAN ROBS BANK.
OLD WOMAN: Oh, those Negroes.
OLD WOMAN CHCUCKLES.
#3
ASIAN MAN ROBS BANK.
OLD WOMAN: INTERN HIM!!!
Don't you just love it when your entire worldview comes in "Fill-in-the-Blank" form?
Friday, February 15, 2008
There Will Be Blood. . . IN SPACE. . . .
. . . Space . . . Space . . . Space. . . space. . .!*
It's long been known that Saturn's moon Titan has a huge amount of organic (carbon-based) chemicals, both in its dense atmosphere (twice as dense as Earth's) and in its frozen lakes of methane(recently photographed by the Huygens probe). Scientists believe that Titan's hydrocarbon content is very similar to that of Earth before the beginning of life, and thus that the moon-- which has been effectively "frozen" for billions of years-- provides a snapshot of our own world from ages past.
Big whoop.
Fortunately, Cassini-Huygens researcher has found an actual good reason to care about Titan: TAITEN HAZ TEH OILZ!!!1!1
*As I wrote this, I found myself wondering if "Space" is really spelled like that.
Having been an astronomy and space travel nut my whole life, I now suddenly wondered why I had written a word that sounded like "Spa-kay" (Latinesque pronunciation). I actually had to look up the word "space" on Google to make sure it was spelled properly. Stupid foreign languages messing up my science!
It's long been known that Saturn's moon Titan has a huge amount of organic (carbon-based) chemicals, both in its dense atmosphere (twice as dense as Earth's) and in its frozen lakes of methane(recently photographed by the Huygens probe). Scientists believe that Titan's hydrocarbon content is very similar to that of Earth before the beginning of life, and thus that the moon-- which has been effectively "frozen" for billions of years-- provides a snapshot of our own world from ages past.
Big whoop.
Fortunately, Cassini-Huygens researcher has found an actual good reason to care about Titan: TAITEN HAZ TEH OILZ!!!1!1
Saturn's moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from the Cassini spacecraft.As the article says, Titan is over a billion kilometers away(When? On closest approach? Furthest?) so there probably won't be any attempt to extract it. However, for the sake of balance-- actually, for the sake of my contract obligates me to climb my political soapbox at least once every three blogs-- let me just point out some of the stupid things that supposedly reasonable, advanced civilizations have done to get their hands on oil:
The bounty of fuels, however, is on an orange-coloured moon at least 1.2 billion kilometres from Earth, a trip that took the Cassini spacecraft seven years to make.
Researchers from the European Space Agency first reported their findings about the ringed planet's moon in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters on Jan. 28.
Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said the estimated fuel reserves are based on Cassini's surface maps of the moon, which show what appear to be lakes and seas. Researchers speculate the liquid is methane, one of the few known molecules to exist as a liquid in such extreme cold.
The scientists also believe dunes on the moon's surface are made of complex organic molecules called tholins.
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material-it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz in a statement. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."
Although only 20 per cent of the moon's surface has been mapped, the researchers have already found dozens of lakes that individually could house as much energy as the 117,000 million tonnes of proven reserves of oil and gas on Earth.
"[Our] global estimate is based mostly on views of the lakes in the northern polar regions. We have assumed the south might be similar, but we really don't yet know how much liquid is there," said Lorenz.
The dense haze of Titan's mostly nitrogen atmosphere had prevented earlier attempts to view the surface of the moon before the U.S. space probe Cassini first arrived in 2004. Radar is the only way to pierce the haze surrounding Titan, which has an atmosphere 10 times denser than Earth's.
The probe's next flyby of Titan is on Feb. 22, 2008, when it will observe the landing site of the ESA's Huygens probe, which landed on the moon's surface in 2004.
The combined Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. It first launched from Earth in 1997.
Titan's dense atmosphere and presence of carbon-based material have fascinated scientists who see it as a time vault of what Earth may have looked like billions of years ago, before life formed and introduced oxygen into the atmosphere.
*As I wrote this, I found myself wondering if "Space" is really spelled like that.
Having been an astronomy and space travel nut my whole life, I now suddenly wondered why I had written a word that sounded like "Spa-kay" (Latinesque pronunciation). I actually had to look up the word "space" on Google to make sure it was spelled properly. Stupid foreign languages messing up my science!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
My Story
Naomi said:
I haven't posted in a while, partly because Christmas, partly because I'm still a little embarrassed about LOLWorf, and partly because I've spent the last month and a half roughly writing a short story. So, now that I'm getting back into the groove of school, I thought I'd put my time to its most productive possible use: showing you an excerpt of said short story.
Naomi, my mom, and Josh Sandu have all seen early drafts of the story. However, the excerpt below is something totally new, so hopefully they'll enjoy it as much as you will!
. . . :|
Just read it. And ignore the fact that one of the characters is named Josh. It means nothing.
Excerpt from "Achilles":
Josh. She met him at Pandora's Box a month before. It was a June the 16th party(the owner was of Irish descent, and considered himself a literature aficionado) but she didn't know this. She just knew that it was a party. A few people dressed in old black suits and dresses, and a couple of people went up onto the bar's small front stage, carrying thick tattered tomes with ugly covers from which they recited lines like "loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood." But like Megan, most were there just to be there, for fun, and would have been there no matter whose day it was.
But Josh?
"Vain patience to heap and hoard," he said. "Time would surely scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside plundered passed-- uh, passing on. Sorry. Uh, their eyes knew years-- knew the years wandering and patient knew the dishonours of the flesh."
He would glance up from his book every moment or so, trying to catch brief sight of the tall limping girl at the bar.
"Who has not? Stephen said. Whaddaya mean? Deasy asked. He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainty-- uh, uncertainly. Fuck. Uh. . ."
Few noticed him fumble, and those who did didn't care to react.
"Is the old isdom-- uh, wisdom. . . Is this old wisdom? He want to hear from me." And with dramatic pause, he came to the part he had been waiting to speak.
"History," Josh said, "is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake."
He finished his set quickly and unceremoniously, stepping down and going toward the bar and its limping girl, Megan.
"The rusty boot," he said.
Megan turned to Josh, who was looking at her foot.
"What?" she said.
"I said, the rusty boot. It's okay. Don't worry about it."
"Were you just up there?"
"Yeah. I'm Josh."
"Megan."
She shook his hand. Her friends had left her sitting at the bar, and though wary, she welcomed his company.
"I never caught what everyone was reading," Megan said.
"This," Josh said, holding up his book. "Ulysses. Best book ever written. It all takes place on the sixteenth of June, so every year people get together to celebrate it."
"Do you go to university?"
"Yeah."
"English major?"
"No. Business."
They continued to talk. No-one bothered to go offstage after Josh's recital, and even those in costume had partly disrobed, abandoning the act. Megan had eaten earlier that evening, but she was getting hungry again, so the two ordered meals and took a seat at a nearby table.
"So you're a runner?" Josh said.
"Yeah. Well, track and field in general."
"My brother was into sports. Competing, I mean. I hope you don't mind me asking , but was it a sports injury that gave you than limp?"
"Oh, this? No. Well, not really. It was a javelin, actually. I was at a practice, this was in spring, and a javelin flew right into my heel. It severed the tendon, and I had to get surgery to fix it."
"So it was a sports injury."
"No. If someone from the other team threw it, it would be a sports injury. This was just bad luck."
"Look, Megan, you're at a Bloomsday party. This is the wrong place to be arguing semantics," he said with a chuckle.
Their food arrived at the table. Megan ordered fried, and Josh ordered vegetarian lasagna. They were finished quickly, and just as quickly ordered drinks to wash the taste out of their mouths. They talked about insignificant things, long enough for Megan's friends to return and wish her goodnight, and for Josh's friends to return and join the two. During her conversation about being a runner, she was reminded of something she thought would be a good story. She had been running since before she could remember. Her mother had told her that when she, Megan, was little, she had no fear of going anywhere on those little legs, which her mother called Megan's "Arnold Schwartzenegger Legs." That was the story. She wanted to tell it to Josh, but didn't. She didn't tell it anyone, partly because she didn't remember until the wrong moments, but also because she never felt it appropriate to do so. As the night wore on and he talked with his friends, she felt a dull sort of regret over not telling him, and waited for another chance.
"You know it was based of a Greek legend, right?" Josh said. "The Odyssey, right? But where's the odyssey here? Where's the adventure? Like, what I mean is, you know, every adventure, every adventure was exotic, every adventure, like, it was a new land with something wondrous, something you've never seen. Like magic, gods, whirlpools, you know, monsters. Right? But here's this book with a guy buying a fucking. . . bar of soap, right?"
Josh laughed at his own words. His friend joined him.
"So where's the adventure? he said, and then with a deep, sudden seriousness in his voice, "Style. Style! That's the key. You can't have adventure in Dublin, I mean that's why he left!You can;t do it. You have to internalize the adventure. That's what it's all about. Stream of consciousness, the adventure within. The sexual adventure, man, everything. And he always does it in a different way, a new island. That's what the adventure really was, you know, that's all you could have."
"Tell that to Hemingway," one of his friends said, to which everyone chuckled.
Josh had an angular face which he always wore with a subtle half-smirk. As the night went on, Megan found his smirk more and more appealing, and when the bar fianlly closed she still wanted to be with him. So, after all of Josh's friends said their goodbyes, she was still beside him, limping along as he walked out the door.
"Well, Megan," Josh said once they were both outside, "it was a pleasure."
"You're not saying goodbye, are you? Leaving me all alone on cold Pandora avenue?"
He looked toward a streetsign.
"So that's why they named it Pandora's Box. I never put that together."
She laughed at Josh, and they both went along the sidewalk, south from Pandora Avenue toward the ocean but still far enough from it not to see it. He noticed Megan's limp again.
"Javelin, huh?" he asked.
"Huh? Oh, yeah." he said.
"Should you be walking?"
"Hasn't hurt me so far."
"Well, your limp begs to differ."
"It was a lot worse before," she said. "Don't worry, I'm a big girl."
Josh heart beat a little faster after hearing that. He pretended not to know why.
"You know, I can take you home, if you really are worried about being alone. You should see my ride. It's the lasted, imported, German bus pass."
Megan chuckled at that. Josh was pleased.
"But seriously," he said. "Just say the word."
"No. I'm not going home. Not yet."
"Why not?"
She realized she missed another opportunity to tell the Arnold Schwartzenegger Legs story again. It didn't worry her as much this time. She would find her opportunity. She start with that and maybe begin a whole list of stories with a running theme, like how she ran circles around the bored kids forced to attend her mother funeral when she was six years old, or how is was more of the same when her father remarried two years later, and maybe then she'd tell him about the ruckus she raised in the halls of Royal Jubilee while her sister, Helen, was being born.
"I don't live on my own," she said. "My dad lives with me, and he's been kind of unbearable recently."
Maybe its not a genetic thing, she thought, about the running. After all, Helen's mother had no relation to Megan whatsoever, and she ran all the way to Ontario, with Helen right behind her.
"He's going, I mean, we're both going through a rough time right now. My stepmon left him a couple of months ago with my half-sister. Took her to, uh, London. Yeah, London, Ontario. I always wanna say Paris, but it's London."
Josh slowly came to a halt. Megan didn't really notice this as she was talking.
"He's sick too. Diabetic. He's been diabetic since before I was born, but it's gotten worse. he's just. . . well, anyway."
She finally notice that she wasn;t limping anymore.
"End of the line," Josh said, pointing to the apratment building nearby.
"You live here?" Megan said. "That's convinient."
"Well, I guess I'll just. . ." he paused long enough so as not to give himself away. "Do you want to come in?"
It had been since the night before, when she walked out on her father engulfed in one of his moods, that she had been out of her house. The idea of rest sent a wave of warm fatique through her, as if in preparation. She knew what was coming, of course, she wasn't stupid. But she didn't mind it. She figured it was about time.
"Yes. I'd like that," she said.
With that, she followed him into the building.
And you, Peter, she thought with the corn thawing under her ankle, wouldn't you like to know what Josh did to me?
-----------
So there you are! It still needs work, and in its final form this part of the story will certainly be very different, but its a start. I think the biggest change that needs to be made is when Josh is talking Ulysses to his friends. I'll either scrap that or heavily modify it. But there will be little changes all over as well.
It'll probably be a long time before its ready to be published. If you're interested, I'll let everyone know how its progressing.
Blog more you swine!So I will.
I haven't posted in a while, partly because Christmas, partly because I'm still a little embarrassed about LOLWorf, and partly because I've spent the last month and a half roughly writing a short story. So, now that I'm getting back into the groove of school, I thought I'd put my time to its most productive possible use: showing you an excerpt of said short story.
Naomi, my mom, and Josh Sandu have all seen early drafts of the story. However, the excerpt below is something totally new, so hopefully they'll enjoy it as much as you will!
. . . :|
Just read it. And ignore the fact that one of the characters is named Josh. It means nothing.
Excerpt from "Achilles":
Josh. She met him at Pandora's Box a month before. It was a June the 16th party(the owner was of Irish descent, and considered himself a literature aficionado) but she didn't know this. She just knew that it was a party. A few people dressed in old black suits and dresses, and a couple of people went up onto the bar's small front stage, carrying thick tattered tomes with ugly covers from which they recited lines like "loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood." But like Megan, most were there just to be there, for fun, and would have been there no matter whose day it was.
But Josh?
"Vain patience to heap and hoard," he said. "Time would surely scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside plundered passed-- uh, passing on. Sorry. Uh, their eyes knew years-- knew the years wandering and patient knew the dishonours of the flesh."
He would glance up from his book every moment or so, trying to catch brief sight of the tall limping girl at the bar.
"Who has not? Stephen said. Whaddaya mean? Deasy asked. He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainty-- uh, uncertainly. Fuck. Uh. . ."
Few noticed him fumble, and those who did didn't care to react.
"Is the old isdom-- uh, wisdom. . . Is this old wisdom? He want to hear from me." And with dramatic pause, he came to the part he had been waiting to speak.
"History," Josh said, "is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake."
He finished his set quickly and unceremoniously, stepping down and going toward the bar and its limping girl, Megan.
"The rusty boot," he said.
Megan turned to Josh, who was looking at her foot.
"What?" she said.
"I said, the rusty boot. It's okay. Don't worry about it."
"Were you just up there?"
"Yeah. I'm Josh."
"Megan."
She shook his hand. Her friends had left her sitting at the bar, and though wary, she welcomed his company.
"I never caught what everyone was reading," Megan said.
"This," Josh said, holding up his book. "Ulysses. Best book ever written. It all takes place on the sixteenth of June, so every year people get together to celebrate it."
"Do you go to university?"
"Yeah."
"English major?"
"No. Business."
They continued to talk. No-one bothered to go offstage after Josh's recital, and even those in costume had partly disrobed, abandoning the act. Megan had eaten earlier that evening, but she was getting hungry again, so the two ordered meals and took a seat at a nearby table.
"So you're a runner?" Josh said.
"Yeah. Well, track and field in general."
"My brother was into sports. Competing, I mean. I hope you don't mind me asking , but was it a sports injury that gave you than limp?"
"Oh, this? No. Well, not really. It was a javelin, actually. I was at a practice, this was in spring, and a javelin flew right into my heel. It severed the tendon, and I had to get surgery to fix it."
"So it was a sports injury."
"No. If someone from the other team threw it, it would be a sports injury. This was just bad luck."
"Look, Megan, you're at a Bloomsday party. This is the wrong place to be arguing semantics," he said with a chuckle.
Their food arrived at the table. Megan ordered fried, and Josh ordered vegetarian lasagna. They were finished quickly, and just as quickly ordered drinks to wash the taste out of their mouths. They talked about insignificant things, long enough for Megan's friends to return and wish her goodnight, and for Josh's friends to return and join the two. During her conversation about being a runner, she was reminded of something she thought would be a good story. She had been running since before she could remember. Her mother had told her that when she, Megan, was little, she had no fear of going anywhere on those little legs, which her mother called Megan's "Arnold Schwartzenegger Legs." That was the story. She wanted to tell it to Josh, but didn't. She didn't tell it anyone, partly because she didn't remember until the wrong moments, but also because she never felt it appropriate to do so. As the night wore on and he talked with his friends, she felt a dull sort of regret over not telling him, and waited for another chance.
"You know it was based of a Greek legend, right?" Josh said. "The Odyssey, right? But where's the odyssey here? Where's the adventure? Like, what I mean is, you know, every adventure, every adventure was exotic, every adventure, like, it was a new land with something wondrous, something you've never seen. Like magic, gods, whirlpools, you know, monsters. Right? But here's this book with a guy buying a fucking. . . bar of soap, right?"
Josh laughed at his own words. His friend joined him.
"So where's the adventure? he said, and then with a deep, sudden seriousness in his voice, "Style. Style! That's the key. You can't have adventure in Dublin, I mean that's why he left!You can;t do it. You have to internalize the adventure. That's what it's all about. Stream of consciousness, the adventure within. The sexual adventure, man, everything. And he always does it in a different way, a new island. That's what the adventure really was, you know, that's all you could have."
"Tell that to Hemingway," one of his friends said, to which everyone chuckled.
Josh had an angular face which he always wore with a subtle half-smirk. As the night went on, Megan found his smirk more and more appealing, and when the bar fianlly closed she still wanted to be with him. So, after all of Josh's friends said their goodbyes, she was still beside him, limping along as he walked out the door.
"Well, Megan," Josh said once they were both outside, "it was a pleasure."
"You're not saying goodbye, are you? Leaving me all alone on cold Pandora avenue?"
He looked toward a streetsign.
"So that's why they named it Pandora's Box. I never put that together."
She laughed at Josh, and they both went along the sidewalk, south from Pandora Avenue toward the ocean but still far enough from it not to see it. He noticed Megan's limp again.
"Javelin, huh?" he asked.
"Huh? Oh, yeah." he said.
"Should you be walking?"
"Hasn't hurt me so far."
"Well, your limp begs to differ."
"It was a lot worse before," she said. "Don't worry, I'm a big girl."
Josh heart beat a little faster after hearing that. He pretended not to know why.
"You know, I can take you home, if you really are worried about being alone. You should see my ride. It's the lasted, imported, German bus pass."
Megan chuckled at that. Josh was pleased.
"But seriously," he said. "Just say the word."
"No. I'm not going home. Not yet."
"Why not?"
She realized she missed another opportunity to tell the Arnold Schwartzenegger Legs story again. It didn't worry her as much this time. She would find her opportunity. She start with that and maybe begin a whole list of stories with a running theme, like how she ran circles around the bored kids forced to attend her mother funeral when she was six years old, or how is was more of the same when her father remarried two years later, and maybe then she'd tell him about the ruckus she raised in the halls of Royal Jubilee while her sister, Helen, was being born.
"I don't live on my own," she said. "My dad lives with me, and he's been kind of unbearable recently."
Maybe its not a genetic thing, she thought, about the running. After all, Helen's mother had no relation to Megan whatsoever, and she ran all the way to Ontario, with Helen right behind her.
"He's going, I mean, we're both going through a rough time right now. My stepmon left him a couple of months ago with my half-sister. Took her to, uh, London. Yeah, London, Ontario. I always wanna say Paris, but it's London."
Josh slowly came to a halt. Megan didn't really notice this as she was talking.
"He's sick too. Diabetic. He's been diabetic since before I was born, but it's gotten worse. he's just. . . well, anyway."
She finally notice that she wasn;t limping anymore.
"End of the line," Josh said, pointing to the apratment building nearby.
"You live here?" Megan said. "That's convinient."
"Well, I guess I'll just. . ." he paused long enough so as not to give himself away. "Do you want to come in?"
It had been since the night before, when she walked out on her father engulfed in one of his moods, that she had been out of her house. The idea of rest sent a wave of warm fatique through her, as if in preparation. She knew what was coming, of course, she wasn't stupid. But she didn't mind it. She figured it was about time.
"Yes. I'd like that," she said.
With that, she followed him into the building.
And you, Peter, she thought with the corn thawing under her ankle, wouldn't you like to know what Josh did to me?
-----------
So there you are! It still needs work, and in its final form this part of the story will certainly be very different, but its a start. I think the biggest change that needs to be made is when Josh is talking Ulysses to his friends. I'll either scrap that or heavily modify it. But there will be little changes all over as well.
It'll probably be a long time before its ready to be published. If you're interested, I'll let everyone know how its progressing.
Friday, November 30, 2007
The Greatest Political Ad Your Sorry Asses Will EVAR See!
. . . which isn't saying much, I'll admit. Still, this ad from Republican Mike Huckabee beats Hillary Clinton's pathetic Sopranos parody by a long shot.
Chuck Norris' endorsements of Democratic presidential candidates cure cancer. Too bad he's. . . oh, never mind!
Chuck Norris' endorsements of Democratic presidential candidates cure cancer. Too bad he's. . . oh, never mind!
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
$100,000,000
In response to my last post, Naomi said:
$100,000,000. Really? Well then. . .
But methinks this is all part of a plan:
Just replace "Get the warhead" with "Launch a Spice Girls concert" and you get the idea.
hahahahahah wow. As if that isn't bad enough, their reunion tour is supposed to gross over $100 000 000.
$100,000,000. Really? Well then. . .
But methinks this is all part of a plan:
Just replace "Get the warhead" with "Launch a Spice Girls concert" and you get the idea.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
This is the end. . .
Ladies and, well, A.J., I present to you the long awaited return of. . . The Spice Girls!
Or, as I prefer to think of it:
Perhaps more to the point:
Yeah, like that, only cause by five girls from an island nation.
I got it!
Yup. Somehow that pretty much sums up how I feel right about now.
Or, as I prefer to think of it:
Perhaps more to the point:
Yeah, like that, only cause by five girls from an island nation.
I got it!
Yup. Somehow that pretty much sums up how I feel right about now.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
A New Record!
Kyle Took a Bullet for Me has broken it's monthly blog post record, with a current 12 entries for October, surpassing the earlier record of 11 entries back in March.
Of course, to break that record, I had to post a blog celebrating the fact that the record has been broken. Does that count? Does it matter?
Of course, to break that record, I had to post a blog celebrating the fact that the record has been broken. Does that count? Does it matter?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Miyuu is an Angel in Disguise. . . LOOK INTO MY EYES!
Much as I love Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, I can still be honest about it. Like all children's shows, it is designed to sell toys. Most kids, at some level, understand that. However, for the slower, denser bunch, further measures may be neccessary. Thus, I present to you, courtesy of the Toei corporation, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon toy commericials, starring the unreasonably lovely Miyuu Sawai:
Sailor Moon Heart Moon Brooch and Moonlight Stick
Sailor Moon Makeup/Jewelery Set
Sailor Moon Henshin Phone
Sailor Moon Stationary Set
Sailor Moon Princess Harp
Sailor Moon Colouring Desk
Sailor Moon Henshin Dress-up
PLUS, act now and get these two pre-Sailor Moon Miyuu Sawai commercials absolutely free!
Still Not Enough Dubya?
Here are some of Presidents Bush's quotes on religion. You can find a more comprehansive list at The Times. I've picked out the real gems for you.
1. I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. Sharm el-Sheikh August 2003
2. I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.
Statement made during campaign visit to Amish community, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Jul. 9, 2004
3. I'm also mindful that man should never try to put words in God's mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God. Washington, D.C., Jan. 14, 2005
8. I don't think you order suiciders to kill innocent men, women, and children if you're a religious person. Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, Jul. 14, 2004
9. And there's nothing more powerful in helping change the country than the faith -- faith in Dios.
National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., May 16, 2002
10. We believe in an Almighty, we believe in the freedom for people to worship that Almighty. They don't. Martinsburg, West Virginia, Jul. 4, 2007
11. The spirit of our people is the source of America's strength. And we go forward with trust in that spirit, confidence in our purpose, and faith in a loving God who made us to be free.
5th anniversary of the Sep. 11 attacks, White House, Sep. 11, 2006
13.We can never replace lives, and we can't heal hearts, except through prayer.
Enterprise, Alabama, Mar. 3, 2007
14. God bless the people of this part of the world. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Aug. 4, 2007
16. I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah
White House, Dec. 10, 200117.
17. I see an opportunity at home when I hear the stories of Christian and Jewish women alike, helping women of cover, Arab American women go shop because they're afraid to leave their home.
Washington, D.C., Oct. 4, 2001
18. It's a sign from above. Comment made when television light caught fire above crowd, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Mar. 9, 2001
19. I did denounce it. I de- I denounced it. I denounced interracial dating. I denounced anti-Catholic bigacy... bigotry. Responding to attacks on his visit to ultra-conservative Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, Feb. 25, 2000
23. And I just -- I cannot speak strongly enough about how we must collectively get after those who kill in the name of -- in the name of some kind of false religion.
Press appearance with King Abdullah of Jordan, Aug. 1, 2002
25. By being active citizens in your church or your synagogue, or for those Muslims, in your mosque, and adhering to the admission to love a neighbor just like you'd like to be loved yourself, that's how we can stand up.
Remarks to the cattle industry annual convention and trade show, Denver, Colorado, Feb. 8, 2002
32. By the way, to whom much has been given, much is owed. Not only are we leading the world in terms of encouraging freedom and peace, we're feeding the hungry. We're taking care of, as best as we possibly can, the victims of HIV/AIDS. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jul. 20, 2004
37. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research. ...Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale. 2006 State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 2006
39. Every new citizen of the United States has an obligation to learn our customs and values, including liberty and civic responsibility, equality under God and tolerance for others, and the English language. Tucson, Arizona, Nov. 28, 2005
41.Secondly, it's really important, Pete, that people not think government is a loving entity. Government is law and justice. Love comes from the hearts of people that are able to impart love. And therefore, what Craig is doing is -- he doesn't realize it -- he's a social entrepreneur. He is inspiring others to continue to reach out to say to somebody who is lonely, I love you. And I'm afraid this requires a higher power than the federal government to cause somebody to love somebody.
44. All of you -- all in this generation of our military -- have taken up the highest calling of history. You're defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope -- a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out,' -- and to those in darkness, 'be free.' Aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, a couple of miles away from San Diego May 1, 2003
47. It's also important for people to know we never seek to impose our culture or our form of government. We just want to live under those universal values, God-given values. Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2002
Monday, October 1, 2007
As if Toxic Meteor Rocks Weren't Enough...
. . . here are two more examples of B-movie monsters come to life thanks to The Power Of Science™:
(1) Brain Eating Amoebae
I shit you not. Thanks to global warming, a heat loving species of amoeba is now able to survive in shallow, human infested waters. This does not bode well for said humans, since this particularly nasty amoeba likes to attach itself to the inside of the nose and burrow itself into the brain, with fatal results: Six young men from Arizona, Texas, and Florida have already died. Since it looks like the oceans, like the rest of the world, are going to keep warming up with time, it's certain that more cases will spring up over an incresingly wide area.
This link will take you to a webpage describing this and other dangerous species thriving as a result of global warming.
(2) Gamma-Ray-Eating Fungus
Maybe this is the reason Mario grows when he eats mushrooms. . .
Researchers in Chernobyl have discovered a species of fungus that uses the protein melanin to convert ionizing radiation-- the dangerous, DNA-breaking, cancer-inducing kind of radiation-- into bioenergy via a process analogous to photosynthesis. Apparently, the fungus was first discovered lining the walls of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
Research also seems to indicate that this ability is not the result of a mutation, nor is it unique to this particular species. In fact, it appears that any fungus containing melanin(whose function in fungi until now was a mystery) can undergo a similar "radiosyntheis" process.
Here's a similar story focusing on underground fungi that feed on uranium ore emissions.
(1) Brain Eating Amoebae
I shit you not. Thanks to global warming, a heat loving species of amoeba is now able to survive in shallow, human infested waters. This does not bode well for said humans, since this particularly nasty amoeba likes to attach itself to the inside of the nose and burrow itself into the brain, with fatal results: Six young men from Arizona, Texas, and Florida have already died. Since it looks like the oceans, like the rest of the world, are going to keep warming up with time, it's certain that more cases will spring up over an incresingly wide area.
This link will take you to a webpage describing this and other dangerous species thriving as a result of global warming.
(2) Gamma-Ray-Eating Fungus
Maybe this is the reason Mario grows when he eats mushrooms. . .
Researchers in Chernobyl have discovered a species of fungus that uses the protein melanin to convert ionizing radiation-- the dangerous, DNA-breaking, cancer-inducing kind of radiation-- into bioenergy via a process analogous to photosynthesis. Apparently, the fungus was first discovered lining the walls of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
Research also seems to indicate that this ability is not the result of a mutation, nor is it unique to this particular species. In fact, it appears that any fungus containing melanin(whose function in fungi until now was a mystery) can undergo a similar "radiosyntheis" process.
Here's a similar story focusing on underground fungi that feed on uranium ore emissions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
