QoS

I'm amazed that they're making this movie so quickly after these events took place in my life.



**edit - better quality video. Just ignore the black at the end, I guess it needed to be longer to make it HD

Given

Shoot the wings off the fly. I think Wanted can't figure out what kind of movie it wants to be, or what sort of statement it wants to make. Apparently in the graphic novel this fraternity of assassins is a group of supervillians that decide to get together and get their revenge on anyone that ever made them feel insignificant. That takes the form of killing and raping, etc.

You can sort of see that in some parts of this movie, but it's like they took aspects of that and yet tried to make these people a little more hollywood worthy. There's some sort of half-assed tension between using their powers for selfishness or following "the code," but it's pretty artificially inserted. What ends up being the main thrust of the movie is a "twist" that I feel like you can see coming from pretty early on.

That being said, I liked it, and I'd see it again. Why? There are some pretty amazing action sequences. It's matrix-esk in that aspect. The explanation for these abilities is that some people can raise their heart rate huge amounts to pump copious amounts of adrenaline into their blood and essentially slow down time. Oddly enough, this strikes me as somehow less realistic than virtual people being jacked into a huge, world-creating computer. This lets them shoot wings off flies, block bullets with other bullets, and other sorts of things that, come on, are pretty sweet. So despite it's sometimes awkward dialogue and wandering plotline, it's does what it's really supposed to pretty damn well.

It also shows Angelina's butt.

Redeem

What a scam. What are casinos exactly? They're basically like video games that if you beat the whole game, maybe you get the price you paid to play. Except way faster. So if I sit down at a blackjack table, the dealer's like "No, you didn't beat it. Okay try again? Nope, not this time either. Oh! You did really well this time! Damn, looks like I did better."

This "adult" entertainment is just like a less fun, more expensive version of the arcade. Who was the first person that learned to manipulate people so well? Probably the ancestor of Donald Trump or something. Cause I tell you what, even a crap casino like the one in Council Bluffs has gotta pull in several hundred thousand at least every night. Just get some money to start a casino and you're set. $5 Blackjack tables are like giving out free samples of heroine. What a funny species we are.

Crumpet

Dreary dreary. My cat puked twice the last night. I had to get up and clean it at like 1 am and 6 pm. You can hear when he starts heaving, and then I get up and grab it with some paper towels and spray it with carpet stuff.

Dear past. I have to sensor myself on my blog. I've been writing though. And some good stuff has come out. Gooooood stuff. I just write without thinking. Like splattering paint on a canvas, it just spills out. Creativity is just about making things that come to mind - and then the sensor portion afterward. But that's easy isn't it? We're all our worst critic. The hard is the creating.

Creation is an act of sheer will, said someone whose name I think was Hammond in a Michael Crichton novel. Or maybe it was just the movie Jurassic Park. I read that book in like 4th grade, and wanted to be a paleontologist like every 4th grader around that time. Then I discovered that just like Indiana Jones doesn't spend his working days running away from giant rolling stone balls, so paleontologists also don't fight real life dinosaurs.

Turpentine. Blastysis, and dearmo.

Recluse

Why am I having waiter dreams? And moreover why are they in McDonalds? If you've ever been a waiter, you probably sympathize. But usually they come in the few weeks or months when you first start working someplace. Oh no, I forgot that or...I've made this table wait forever or...How am I gonna do this special order.

But last night the McDonald's customers in my head had me running around getting chocolate mousse covered pretzels and low carb fish hash browns. At one point I was putting the order in to the computer and the food just popped out of the machine - then I had to work backwards cause it didn't give me a receipt for everything. My manager was some big gangly dark looking guy that couldn't figure out what was going on and didn't seem to care.

How very strange. I spent all of yesterday shut in and maybe it's cabin fever or something. I'd better go out and gamble away some money or anything else to get me out of these three rooms.

Domino

Today I evalled. I'm not going to bother explaining what it means. It is the anticlimax of my henceforth existence. This 10 hour flight and everyone is too tired to move at the end, and a little too bitter to give where credit is due. It is this landing and this long transit across the united states.

And all the souls I know are on night shift, and it's a wednesday, which means I celebrate with a bottle of smirnoff ice, alone on my couch.

I may watch the daily show, I may read something, I may go to the casino. My apartment smells like onions, like a rotting box - the life is drained out of me. I eat because I must and I let my eyes tumble out of their sockets like bowling balls in the alley down the street. The one I'm not in.

Here is the transparency, here is the melancholy, here is the roadblock. The paths of blue open before me, as does the sand. There is no more excuse.

Very Complex

The Onion





You really have to check out the rest of the videos The Onion has put out. Pure genius on toast.

Shift

Evolution before our eyes. It's amazing that though concepts like evolution, relativity, and quantum physics are in all of our mind - established parts of science - but we've been studying them such a short time that big discoveries are still very possible. There may even be more big discoveries in front of us than are behind us, so young are our studies of some subjects.

A case of evolution observed.

We've only been "enlightened" so long, and the world is growing and becoming more fascinating before our eyes. I was driving a few days ago and thought about how we now have paved roads that connect the upper reaches of canada with their antarctic counterpart in Argentina and yet 100 years ago, in 1908, cars were still propped up on wagon wheels. Every facet of our universe is touched by this. We move from a view based on tradition to a view based on discovery and learning, and expanding. Our definitions have changed, anthropologists even have a difficult time defining what exactly sets us apart as "humans." It used to be activity, like tool making, but gorillas were found to do that, even birds and insects have been found to do that. We're so much a part of this world and we are so lucky to be living in a time where we're beginning, at such an accelerated rate, to see what we are, and what this universe is.

Cuireann An Ceol Ar A Shuaimhneas é

I find this solace in these little things like new songs and new arrangements of furniture, and otherwise bury my face in the sand.

Dirt

Encountered on my walks around here. Captured with the camera on my cellphone.