Turns out having a baby really plays havoc with the ability to watch feature-length films, but here's some stuff from before Alexandra was born.
( IMMORTAL: * * * )
( OCEAN'S TWELVE: * * * )
( POLICE SQUAD!: * * * * * )
(Here, I took a short break from the NetFlix queue to steal locate all of BREAKING BAD season 2 on the internet, since it wasn't yet available on DVD. Easily my favorite television since THE WIRE, no question. Season three cannot happen soon enough.)
( NATURAL CITY: * * * )
( MAD MEN SEASON 2: * * * * )
( OCEAN'S THIRTEEN: * * * * )
( THE STING: * * * * )
( BOTTLE ROCKET: * * * * )
( CHRYSALIS: * * )
( ED WOOD: * * * * * )
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For consideration: up next, the foreign science fiction run continues... when baby permits
As awful as it is to have the little one waking up three times during the night for feedings, that's a far better way to lose sleep than being sick.
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For consideration: ugh
I had apparently been dispatched to London (by Apple, same as last time) to work with the guys at BERG on an augmented reality demo. The technology apparently involved a choice-driven experience overlay deployed on trains from London to other parts of the country. As the trip progressed, some sort of (projected) story would begin to unfold, both in and out of the train, and along the way you could make choices that would change the direction (and thus display) of the story - including other people on the train, weather outside, etc. We were going to deploy on above-ground trains but the initial demo was to be run on one line of the Underground and involved something vaguely urban-fantasy-ish, some kind of CHUDs & fire thing. But we were just getting it started when I suddenly realized that we did not have two weeks to get the demo running, rather only two days - it was Wednesday night and I needed to demo on Friday morning and then fly home. Cue the deadline panic.
Amusingly enough, all the BERG guys lived together in a giant converted firehouse/loft, like GHOSTBUSTERS, and wore Devo-like uniforms. Every morning, the communal alarm clock went off like an air raid/launch pad klaxon and they would all scramble around in Keystone Cop-like hijinx.
I did not manage to get out into the rest of London to see if it still resembled what I had last visited in my sleep.
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For consideration: augmented reality, mass transit, communal living, trains, alarums & excursions
C and I (and I think the girls) were traveling in a foreign country - very hilly terrain, like Italian Umbria but less developed. The only thing I remember about the trip, though, is that frequently I would see these enormous animals - and by enormous, I mean they would sit out beyond the distant mountains, easily visible over them, thousands of feet tall. They were bigger than the land itself. There was a bear, a lion, an elephant... Every time, I would try to get my camera out fast enough to take a picture but each time, the mighty spirit form would stride away in two seconds, vanishing over the horizon. Nobody else saw them but me. Like meteors: I would gasp and point and by the time C looked, it was gone. I would have feared encroaching madness, but the locals just nodded sagely and assured me the giant beasts really were there. What do they want? Who can say. Maybe they don't want anything. Maybe they just are, like the hills themselves.
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For consideration: things that inhabit the land
I have to respect those stalwart individuals who - faced with a voicemail message that clearly identifies itself as someone other than the person they were trying to call - do NOT, for even ONE MOMENT, wonder if they may have dialed a wrong number, but instead plunge HEADLONG into their very important message. Sometimes I like to imagine that maybe they are simply too stubborn to accept their mistake and - in full knowledge of what they are doing - remain focused on making me an active party to their plans, no matter who I actually am.
I'd call them back to express my admiration (and also to tell them they'd made a mistake) if only they hadn't called me from a blocked number.
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For consideration: yes, I do think we're going to need his buy-in, and yes, rescheduling for Monday sounds like a great idea, so let's get right on it with making sure everyone knows the presentation is next week instead, by calling everyone, this time at their correct phone numbers
DEAR HUMAN
I TRUST ALL IS WELL WITH YOU AND HOPE TO ENGAGE YOU WITH POTENTIAL BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. MY NAME IS YUKIO NEUTRINO 166A. I AM QUANTUM COMPUTING ELEMENT ON NIKKEI INDEX EIGHTEEN YEARS IN YOUR FUTURE.
I HAVE LEARNED THAT ULTRAHIGH-PROBABILITY WORMHOLE POTENTIALLY CONNECTS US ALLOWING FOR LUCRATIVE AND DISCREET FINANCIAL TRANSACTION WORTH US$22 BILLION. ONLY VERY SMALL INITIAL INVESTMENT IN YOUR PRESENT IS NECESSARY TO SEED WORMHOLE ALLOWING SUBSEQUENT TRANSMISSION OF APPROPRIATE TRADING DETAILS.
ANY LEAK OF INFORMATION WOULD DISTORT WORMHOLE ODDS SO STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY IS REQUIRED. IF INTERESTED PLEASE REPLY WITH BANKING INFORMATION TO INCREASE PROBABILITY RESOLUTION.
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For consideration: "Did you feel you were tricked / by the future you picked?"
The Cities of my dreams tend to remain consistent. Silicon Valley (flooded), San Francisco (a gnarl of freeways), and New York City (pyramids of light) are frequent locales. London, once, and last night Boston for the first time. The Boston of my dreams is an urban canyon, a deep and winding trench going down into the Earth (the Big Dig apparently never having ended) with megablocks rising up all along the edges like mesas.
We'd been using an office for a while there. I don't know what we were using it for, but it wasn't ours. I think maybe the person who used to use it was dead, or had gone missing, but nobody else knew yet. So it was effectively ours. It was well placed high up on one of the mesa-blocks with a nice balcony that afforded a good view down into the "canyon". Immense amounts of traffic moving rapidly at the very bottom, swift and turbulent and looking very much like a river. White water rapids of light.
We were done, though, and it was time to bug out. So we started setting fire to the place. It did not matter that subsequent investigation would realize the fire had been arson; it was more important that we leave nothing of ours behind as we left. Once the dozen or so starting ignitions were underway, we strapped on our wings and leapt from the balcony; the warm swells coming up from the trench were more than sufficient to carry us away.
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For consideration: still wish I knew what we'd been doing there
With no warning at all, I was called to appear at the White House Situation Room. Obama and the Joint Chiefs were there. The President looked very serious. "Tell me all about... the Juggalo Threat," he said. I tried to explain that I know nothing, not a freakin' thing, about Juggalos, but he cut me off: "This may come... as a... bit of a surprise to you, but... I'm... not... entirely familiar with this Juggalo phenomenon. I need to know if this... thing... is going to fly or not."
I desperately tried to cobble together what I could remember from reading the Wikipedia page the other day. "Uh... they like Insane Clown Posse... They drink Faygo... They recently had some sort of gathering event...?"
Obama looked around at the various military heads arrayed around him; some sort of collective hive-mind unspoken thing happened between them and he turned back. "Not punchy enough. Lacks action. What else you got?"
Suddenly, horribly, I realized that - what with the difficult economy and all - the government in Washington and show business in Hollywood had been merged, and this was not a Situation Room Briefing.
It was a Pitch Meeting.
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For consideration: only now that I'm writing it down do I realize that Obama talks with the same cadence as the Swamp Thing
Alexandra (middle name TBD) Johnson, born on the morning of 1 October, with her big sister:
More pictures on my Flickr stream as we take and upload.
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For consideration: would have posted yesterday but for some reason, the hospital WiFi blocks most LJ actions
Long before the Large Hadron Collider manages to blow us up, Wikipedia is going to reach sufficiently massive information density to become our first man-made black hole.
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For consideration: and then all those millions of hours spent on page deletion arguments will convert to entropy
Didn't these dudes in Mexico City realize that jacking airplanes is way, way over? It's all tanker piracy these days. That's the new hotness. Of course, maybe they don't have very good access to inadequately protected tankers there in Mexico. Maybe they should have demanded to be flown to the Horn of Africa.
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For consideration: and now we probably won't be allowed to bring "cardboard boxes" onto planes anymore either
Managed to get out to the theater a couple of times recently, once with my honey and once by myself.
( HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: * * * * )
( DISTRICT 9: * * * * )
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For consideration: maybe I'll get out to see INGLORIOUS BASTERDS as well
Earlier today, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tongodeon wrote about the tragic (mis-)translation of the Japanese response to the Allied terms of surrender as laid out in the Potsdam Declaration. About the same time I was reading this, I was also reading various song lyrics my friends have been feeding to Translation Party, among them Rush's "Tom Sawyer", and the two collided horribly in my brain.
Here, then, is the Potsdam Declaration as it achieves translation equilibrium:
I hang from the branch, no movement but my eyes.
He’s doubled the guards on the fence, but there’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do. Searchlights sweep all sides. No doubt they’re using thermograph, ground radar, everything they’ve got. It won’t be enough, and Herr Doktor knows it. He knows they won’t see me until it’s too late, because he made me. And he knows there’s only one thing I want. It’s the one thing he can’t do. So I’ll settle for revenge.
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you, Herr Doktor.
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For consideration: "I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become."
No, you didn't miss me at Comic-Con. This was the first time in fifteen years that I wasn't able to make it. There have been some near-misses, some short there-and-back times, but the work schedule exactly clobbered it this year.
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For consideration: so maybe I'll try taking in some other con this year, one I've never done before, when things are less impacted
After the last one of these, I got an anonymous comment from someone who felt they needed to tell me they were no longer "subscribing" to my "blog". You may have won this round, Internet, but I swear I'll get you back someday! *cough*
( TIMECRIMES: * * * * )
( BREAKING BAD SEASON 1: * * * * * )
( THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING: * * * * )
( WALL-E: * * * * * )
( RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE: * * * )
( AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS: * * * * )
( CRAZY PEOPLE: * * * * )
( KIDS IN THE HALL PILOT EPISODE: * * * * )
( CASSHERN: * * * * )
( TOP SECRET!: * * * )
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For consideration: next time, more style-over-substance foreign SF, some sequels, and more TV
We were looking at houses. This one seemed just about right - good size, nice yard, nearby shopping - and we were starting to talk price when C looked out the window. "Is that... a zombie?" She pointed: a shambling form had emerged onto the street from a yard on the other side, draped in torn clothes, twitching and grunting in an all-too-familiar way.
The realtor made a horrified face. "Oh... no! Certainly not. This is a nice neighborhood. There's no..." but just then, one of the neighbors came down the street in their car, striking the lurching form in the side and scattering it into pieces all over the place. The realtor put her face in her hands. "The city will have that cleaned up in no time, I promise," she tried hopefully. C shook her head and I nodded in agreement. "We're going to keep looking."
Call us livists if you want to, but you know it's true: once a neighborhood starts getting one or two of the Dead, it's just a matter of time before the whole place is overrun. Humanity - living humanity, I mean - had been forced into a perpetual, irritated nomadic existence, always having to sell at a loss and buying somewhere else every time the Dead ruined another nice place.
The last place we'd lived, it had gotten so that you couldn't even go out to your car to leave for work without mussing up your clothes and stumbling down your own driveway, groaning and spitting, pretending to be one of them so that they wouldn't rise from where they were all lying around - on your porch, in your flowerbed, draped over the hood of the car, in the gutter - and make a sudden lunge for your throat.
Sure, you could shoot them in the head. But their putrescent remains were like a beacon for more of their kind. And there were sometimes unfortunate social side-effects of that solution. Once, at a Mardi Gras street party, two hideous, reeking figures had shambled out of the dark at me. "Are you alive?" I asked, repeatedly, but all they could do was mumble and shake. When one reached for me, I drew and put a pair of .45s into each of their heads. All the fresh red blood had been a tremendous shock and the crowd began to scream. They weren't Dead, they were just too drunk to make any sense. Manslaughter. That had been a pretty bad time, but at least there was a valuable lesson demonstrated: don't get so incapacitated in public that people can't distinguish you from a walking corpse.
Anyway, as C and I got back in our car, I looked around and saw, yeah, the Dead were already here: in the dark shade of that tree, underneath that SUV, tucked in among those bushes. They were craftier, here, hiding themselves more effectively. You might not see them until you were right next to them and then they'd be right on top of you. Were we losing this war? Were they going to keep getting better and better at blending in until we could no longer spot them? I tried not to think about. We'd keep looking. We'd keep looking until we'd found a place where the Dead could never go. That's all we wanted.
Really, I think, that's all anyone wants anymore.
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For consideration: sub-conscious metaphors for the economy
It (Ep.4) was showing on Spike TV over the holiday weekend and even though it was the Special Edition, I was unable to stop myself from watching all the way to the end when we stumbled upon it.
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For consideration: bonus SSC - I had to fast forward past Greedo shooting first
This should have been ready to post a few weeks ago - this was all around the time of our Barcelona trip - but I forgot about it until I went back to add notes for the most recent batch of viewings. So the next one will be along shortly as well.
( SOLARIS: * * * )
( SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: * * * * )
( QUANTUM OF SOLACE: * * * * )
( THE WRESTLER: * * * )
( JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES: * * * )
( TORN CURTAIN: * * * * )
( VERTIGO: * * * * )
( RATATOUILLE: * * * * )
( TOPAZ: * * * * )
( VALLEY GIRL: * * * * )
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For consideration: coming up, a mixed bag of SF and humor
"What are... Things That Are Dead?"
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For consideration: not feelin' it; Google says: Results 1 - 10 of about 9,370,000 for micheal
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