Mood Regulation

Getting drunk watching twin peaks...

we're supposed to believe that bikers gather in biker bars to listen to ambient torch songs that sound like Brian Eno producing the Fleetwoods, with lyrics by David Lynch

I always liked twin peaks, and was strangely drawn into the movie "Fire Walk with Me." I don't really know why, either. If pressed about it, I might say it was the way Lynch made ugly things seem really, really ugly, but everything else so damned glamorous.

Or, it might be that the dancing midget has stolen my soul and I'm not my own man anymore.

Everyone is Objectified

Just like the title says, everyone is objectified.  Feminists are wrong because they think it's terrible to be objectified, specifically to be a sexual object. Girlwriteswhat, asks if they would prefer to be disposable objects rather than precious ones.

I have to say, it's a little disorienting to find strong agreement from a short-haired men's clothing wearing female.  Like a breath of fresh air inside a very strange closet...

Nazi's on the moon!

It's going to open in Berlin.  Bad taste, or awesome?  I can't decide.

I have to see this movie, though. I don't know if it's going to be awesome, or the worst thing ever.  Either way, I need to see it.

Interplanetary zeppelins, meteorblitzkreig, cute little kids throwing HJ salutes instead of raising their hands to speak in class... I'm betting on awesomely bad.

All is not lost...

...at least not yet.

Remember when the nerdosphere was all a fluster over Lily Collins being cast as as Mia, the drug addict analogue to Ash in the Sam Raimi-produced, Diablo Cody-spruced-up The Evil Dead remake? Well, cool it since word is she’s out now.  Variety’s Jeff Sneider Tweeted this today:

What?  Three fairly happy posts in a row?  They're going to take away my misanthrope card.

All is well, and all will be well...

Really, how bad can life be when some 90 pound nerd guesses "donkey punch" on jeopardy?

I have not the words for how awesome that is.

I am wildly jealous

Something awesome to pass the time.

A heartwarming tale

Some self righteous hippie was beaten to death by seals.  To celebrate this victory over voluntary retardation, lets all sit quietly and think about other hippies who should be killed with the instrument of their imbecility.

I say we start with the anti-smoking lobby and the MADD bitches.  I've got a pitchfork, if you'll bring the torches.

Voodoo Witch Doctor Bullshit

This is priceless.  This was part of an actual legislative bill in New Mexico:

When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. Additionally, a psychologist or psychiatrist shall be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length, and shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand. Whenever a psychologist or psychiatrist provides expert testimony regarding a defendant’s competency, the bailiff shall contemporaneously dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes to a Chinese gong…

It was obviously meant for satire, but it is a damn shame it was removed from the final bill.

See? Psychology is easy.  Ask if they're crazy and listen to their answer.  Duh.

Reading on the deck of the Titanic

So, while the folks in washington are rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic, we'll need something to read. 

In steps TVtropes.com.  I cannot possibly overstate how awesome this site is. It's depressingly easy to waste an entire night on a wiki-walk, going from ham to narm, to the last refuge of tosh.o which makes me notice the swastika pasties, and winding up with Ice Cream Koans.

I totally wasn't kidding about the swastika pasties.

I know, I know...

I tend to recommend people several times in a row (case in point, Fred, Fred and Fred), but when I run across something sufty-gee-whiz-nifty I tend to want you to read it.  If it happens to be every article an author wirtes for two months (Ol Remus...) then that's just how it works.

Speaking of "how it works," the Incredible Hulk discusses the Hulk Movies and explaining the joke and why articles can and mostly should be really, really long.

#7. - SOME THEN ARGUE "Fine, if you're so convinced the writing works, it's still way too long to read." HULK ARGUE THE WRITING NOT LONG, THE SUBJECTS ARE LONG. THE WORLD IS FULL OF EVERYONE WALKING AROUND TRYING TO PAINT A PICTURE OF REALITY IN THE THE SHORTEST, LEAST COMPREHENSIVE STROKES POSSIBLE. WHICH ISN'T ALWAYS PRODUCTIVE. THIS WILL SOUND ABSURD HULK REALLY JUST TRIES TO TAKE AS LITTLE TIME AS POSSIBLE TO DELVE INTO SUBJECTS WITHOUT CUTTING CORNERS. THINK ABOUT HOW BROAD MOST OF THESE TOPICS ARE. A LOT OF THEM COULD BE FULL-ON BOOKS. SOMETIMES HULK EVEN CAME CLOSE! (HULK'S ACTION COLUMNS WITH TOM TOWNEND TOOK UP 120+ WORD PAGES). SO YUP, THEY'RE LONG! BUT LONG THINGS ARE WORTH IT SOMETIMES TOO. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THEY SEEM TO BE TOO RARE NOWADAYS. AND IF YOU ARGUE "the internet is for short stuff!" HULK DISAGREE. BOOKS, PAPER, PAGES, ARE FINITE. THE INTERNET IS ENDLESS. HULK CAN LINK TO REAL LIVE VIDEOS YOU CAN INTERACTIVE AND WE CAN COMMENT TOGETHER. THE INTERNET IS NOT SHORT. IT'S ONLY LIMIT IS OUR MINDS.

I really approve of this sort of message.  One of the things I've debated with myself is whether average people have always thought in 140 character units, or if it's a recent adaptation to texting and twitter, and similar bullshit. 

I don't mean that people think "okay, I've got 140 characters to get this thought out, I'd better make it a good one."  Rather, I have noticed that most of the people I deal with tend to have a very shallow understanding of what's going on.  It's possible that they think more deeply about parts of their lives that don't overlap with mine, but I don't see any evidence thereof.  Daily, literally daily, I am astounded at how little even the highly educated participate in their own lives.

This isn't some lame reach-back to high school and the "carpe diem" t-shirts that were popular back in the misty dawn of time.  If anything, people have been carpe-ing too much diem, and ignoring the day after this diem.  Not only no future time orientation, no concept that there is such a thing.

Black Death Exonerations

In another example of why I like archaeologists more than most all other social scientists, Archaeologists have now exonerated rats for their alleged part in the spread of the black death.

"The evidence just isn't there to support it," said Barney Sloane, author of The Black Death in London. "We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they just aren't there. And all the evidence I've looked at suggests the plague spread too fast for the traditional explanation of transmission by rats and fleas. It has to be person to person – there just isn't time for the rats to be spreading it."

I'm pleased by this, not because I'm a fan of rats, though they've never done me any wrong.  The reason I'm pleased is that archaeologists are taking new data about something that was thought to be a closed case and using that new data to refine their conclusions, rather than the other way around.  It's the way things are supposed to work in the world of scientific inquiry.

Mortality continued to rise throughout the bitterly cold winter, when fleas could not have survived, and there is no evidence of enough rats.
Black rat skeletons have been found at 14th-century sites, but not in high enough numbers to make them the plague carriers, he said.

To re-iterate my point: scientists found evidence to exonerate two of the most hated pests in history of one of the worst disasters to hit human kind, and changed their conclusions rather than explaining it away.  This is  more amazing than I can say (and how sad is it that rational behavior on the part of scientists is impressive?).

My brother called it...

Apparently the new Conan sucks ass.

This is quite possibly the worst written screenplay that I have had the misfortune to see, misconstituted into film. Despite the mellifluous tones of Morgan Freeman as the narrator in the film, the script is so badly written it’s a flagrant waste of his voice talents. The rest of the dialogue is like a caricature of the dialogue in the worst action movies in history. I do not blame the writing of Robert E. Howard, who was influenced by Bullfinch’s Mythology in 1913. His original poem, “Cimmeria” was the catalyst for creating the world known as the Hyborian Age, the mythological backdrop of the Conan story. But, the magic of the original doesn’t translate to the script, which falls flat, lifeless and weekly clichéd on the screen.

Still, there is reason to hope:

The film is rated R for Strong Bloody Violence, some sexuality and nudity. There are a couple of different scenes containing women with bare breasts.

Full Metal Monkey

Full Metal Monkey would be an awesome title, and also would make up for the piss-poor Iron Monkey.  There were no monkeys at all in that film.  Flagrant false advertising.  FLAGRANT!

David Foster Wallace

I don't know who he is,  but he talks real pretty.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

i admit it...

it was me.

Paging Hank Reardon

Would Mr. Reardon or Ms. Taggart call the front desk please?

“Nearly every day without fail…men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just…you know…what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I see these guys—I see them with tears in their eyes—looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So…basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”

It was Col. Mustard, in the parlour, with an asteroid...

Looks like it was probably the giant killer asteroid that did it.  I love how paleontologists keep steadily grinding away at at stuff until they come up with something.  Regular as clockwork, they are.

You can't see me!

Seriously. I am awesome at hiding.

LINE 'EM UP!

Bob Lutz, the former Vice Chairman of General Motors, is the most famous also-ran in the auto business. In the course of his 47-year rampage through the industry, he's been within swiping range of the brass ring at Ford, BMW, Chrysler and, most recently, GM, but he's never landed the top gig. It's because he "made the cars too well," he says. It might also have something to do with the fact that Maximum Bob, who could double as a character on Mad Men, is less an éminence grise than a pithy self-promoter who has a tendency to go off corporate message. That said, his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, has a message worth hearing. To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let engineers run the show.To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let the engineers run the show.