Seriously, y’all. That said, as Mr P frequently points out, weird is infinitely preferable to horrible.
[Listening to: Filmstar – Suede – Coming Up (03:25)]
Ain’t talking about riffs
I’ve always had trouble describing my musical taste to people. It always comes out as ‘eclectic’, but now, with this list, Total Guitar Magazine has hit the nail on the head of one of the most important things for me: wicked guitar riffs.
Of their top 20 tracks, I’ve got 17 on CD somewhere. That’s some major riff action.
[Listening to: Whole Lotta Love – James Taylor Quartet – Greatest Acid Jazz Hits (04:36)]
The girl all the bad guys want
Writing and therefore thinking, once again, on altruism – and trying to understand more fully some of the things that supposedly tie in to my world view.
I believe, in a nutshell, that humanity is predisposed to altruistic motivations (and therefore altruistic behaviour, on occasion when akrásia fails). And I believe there’s an evolutionary basis to this (and all other) morality.
What, then, is my view in light of the obvious and evident acts of torture and brutality that’s been going on, by the supposed good guys?
I guess, and this is something that Michael Madsen (Mr Blonde of Reservoir Dogs fame) says when talking about how to best play the bad guy: the bad guy never believes he’s the bad guy. Although this is not the most original thought there’s been, I think nothing could be more true than for the ‘crusaders’ in Iraq – watching their friends die in what they’ve been told is a war on evil, a war on terror.
The travesty, of course, is that no-one is quite speaking in terms of these acts of atrocity as acts of terror, acts of evil. They are atrocities, but somehow one accepts atrocities in war and we remain entrenched in the rut. I think someone needs to through the hyperbole back into Bush’s face and then we’ll see how grey his black and white universe is.
[Listening to: One Last Shot – Klaus Badelt – Pirates of the Caribbean OST (04:46)]
Bloating…
I just keep adding stuff to this site and it keeps getting messier and bigger… But hopefully more functional. You can now subscribe to this blog (see right hand column) to get a daily email of updates, and you can googlesearch it (see left hand column).
But today is the first day of anything resembling sunshine we’ve had in about two weeks, so I’m going to stop blogging and go outside and enjoy it.
But first, a link to the trailer for Zach Braff’s new film, Garden State. Zach is ‘JD’ from Scrubs, which is possibly my favourite medical sitcom ever. Oh, hang on… The film does look intriguing, and like it has nothing to do with doctors, and something to do with Natalie Portman. Check it.
[Listening to: Growing on me – The Darkness – Come Away With Me (04:12)]
Eternal sunshine #2
I tried writing a little more about Eternal Sunshine this morning and found myself really struggling. There’s something about Charlie Kaufman scripts that seem to really have me empathising to a degree that makes successful articulation of my emotional and intellectual response very, very difficult; the same was true for Adaptation, which was generally thought of to be an inferior film, and even, to a lesser extent, Being John Malkovich, which was excellent but slightly sillier.
Here’s what it was about, I think, in as much of a nutshell as I can get: it was a story about true love, but the film was really about second chances. It was about learning from our mistakes and how we can’t if we forget, about accepting certain realities about who we are and our own limitations, and ultimately, it seemed to me that Mr Kaufman believes that love will find a way.
It’s not a naive sentiment; the film explores the issues of true love in the context of the complications of real human interaction, dark edges and all. In fact, most of the film is dark edges; but casting those shadows, I think, is an uber-metaphorical ultra-poncey sunshine of optimism.
It’s really, really good. And I do love Kirsten Dunst, and Kate Winslet both. Wonderful. And Jim Carrey gets whole new respect from me; I’m not one of those who harbours an irrational dislike for the rubber-faced comedy actor: in fact, seeing him in The Truman Show and The Majestic demonstrated the breadth of his range. This movie really shows him at his best.
Complete aside: I also saw the trailer for the new Coen brothers film, which looks like it could be entertaining, especially if you like Tom Hanks.
[Listening to: Money for Nothing – Dire Straits (04:09)]
Weird dreams #4
I really need to lay off the all-cheese pizzas before bed. Oh, no, that was in the dream too…
This time, I was at a job interview, had received an offer, and the MD of the company came up to me afterward and said “there’s been a problem,” and listed all the bad things I’ve ever done since I was twelve, which he had mapped out in a small brown bound notebook. These include, apparently, being surly to customers at Marks & Spencer where I once sold suits (something that’s never happened, honest).
There were also an inexplicable number of people from my old school working for that particular firm, so perhaps it was really a nightmare…
Some of this actually made sense in view of the kind of day I’ve been having recently…
[Listening to: In the Garage – Weezer – Weezer (03:56)]
The infinite glimmering of the unblemished consciousness
Even if it hadn’t been Kirsten Dunst (for whom my love is REAL, I tell you) reciting these lines, they’d still have been beautiful. What a film. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
More tomorrow.
“How happy is the blameless Vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d. ”
— Alexander Pope
[Listening to: my own thoughts (6:42)]
Weird dreams #3
I know there’s been a slightly overload of techie/geeky posts lately, so here’s one that’s just plain eccentric. I’ve had odd dreams before, but last night’s was a two-parter, full on Captain Weird of dreams (well, three parts, but part three was too disturbing to be spoken of. Ever. Again.)
Part the first: I was a kind of Radar O’Reilly/Captain Piers hybrid figure from M*A*S*H, and the 4077th had been substantially disbanded as everyone’s tours of duty had come to an end. Only BJ, me and (oddly enough) Colonel Henry Blake remained. So I helped them get home, somehow, by persuading Icore that the 4077th was useless when not a team, and that team had gone. They were happy to go home, and grateful to me for my manipulative scheming.
Part the second: My brother decided to have a party themed on Imperial Russia (don’t ask me how that works, I’m not quite sure, but it involved caviar and vodka – and funny hats) – and I was meant to be leaving the house but couldn’t quite manage it. The flat was much bigger than the one we actually live in, but structurally similar, and during my failure to leave, I kept wandering past a section that had been modelled like a McDonald’s and inhabited entirely by Koreans eating cheeseburgers.
It’s possible that my latter dream was a subconscious commentary on the state of globalisation, the death of ideology and the resurrection of the bizarre themed party, and the former simply my desire to be the hero acting out. Then again, its possible that I just like to dance the dream of the surreal.
[Listening to: The Remedy – Jason Mraz – Waiting For My Rocket To Come (04:17)]
Ferrett Hammock
Alright, I happened to click through to the US Google site for a change, and curiousity took me through to Froogle, Google’s extremely punny comparison shopping site. I then noticed that it had this listed as a recently found item.
How odd the people of the Interweb are.
[Listening to: Couldn’t Get It Right – Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Mimosa (03:47)]
KKriegertastic
Check out this game! The graphics may not look amazing from this screenshot, but have a look on the main site and click on some of the full res ones!
What’s impressive is not the graphics per se, but the fact that the entire game package weighs in at just under 100KB, which, for the not technically inclined, is very, very small. I downloaded and ran the beta on my machine (an Athlon 2000XP, 512MB RAM, Geforce3), which was sadly too far below the minimum spec to be useful in any real way, but gave an indication of the game’s potential.
The game engine dynamically generates textures for the game, sucking up vast amounts of RAM but virtually no hard disk space. It’s a clever little algorithm.
Trés impressionant.
via James, creator of Mcfensive Google.
[Listening to: Mysterious Ways – U2 (04:03)]