Archives for 2008
I started reading Anathem with some hesitation, because I really didn’t get into The Baroque Cycle. It’s not that they were bad books, I just wasn’t into the time period they were set in. Thankfully, this is a return to his earlier style of spec-fic, and I found the world he invented absolutely compelling. The [...]
“I don’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole.” – President Bush, referring to an Iraqi reporter who threw shoes at him.
If you liked Gears 1, you’ll like this one. It’s more of the same, with slightly better graphics. One thing I liked is that there’s a little more color. The world is still mostly brown and gray, but as they walk through cities and forests, you get to see that the Gears world is not, [...]
“When you read the book, it’s like, ‘Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.’ I mean, every line is like that. He’s the most ridiculous person who’s so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn’t do that. And the more I read the script, [...]
”In my movie, Superman doesn’t care about humanity, Batman can’t get it up, and the bad guy wants world peace.” – Zack Snyder, discussing his adaptation of Watchmen
Hello, Your resume was found on one of the job sites. We examined your candidacy and want to offer you a position in our company. If your resume changed, please send us an updated version to email, indicated at the end of the letter. My name is Natalie Patton, I am a employee manager in [...]
The new dashboard is really slick. The entire thing has been overhauled, to the point where it feels like a brand new console, rather than just a software upgrade. At first, it’s a little confusing if you’re used to the “blades” interface, because everything has been moved around and reorganized, but I think the new [...]
If you haven’t seen Casino Royale yet, go see it before you see this one. Unlike Bond movies in the past, which were all stand-alone, this is a true sequel to the first movie. It opens maybe an hour after the finale of Casino Royale, and jumps right into the action. Continuing their general theme [...]
While digging through some old papers, Annie found this set of pages she colored when she was in second grade in 1986. I love the inclusion of the “stand” as part of the computer. It holds the monitor!
“The absolute worst thing in Matrix III was when Keanu gets to the virtual office of the Big Computer Mind, and he meets, like, a tweedy professor with a white beard. Ugh! At the very least it should have been a fat hacker in a T-shirt, preferably high on pineal extract.” – Rudy Rucker
You all know this story. In the summer of 1950, Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American physicist and atomic pile-builder, went to lunch at Los Alamos National Laboratory and joined some colleagues there and asked them a question. “Where is everybody?” This confused his colleagues, obviously, because they were sitting right there with him, and then he [...]
Like “Joe the Plumber” — who is not a licensed plumber, whose first name isn’t Joe, whose boss’s business makes $100K, not $250K and isn’t for sale, and who couldn’t afford it if it were for sale based on his own income of $40K and his outstanding tax lien — a certain sad proportion of [...]
“I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the [...]
“In truth, however, I know there are lots of Americans who, whatever their income, believe that the government should get its grubby hands off their money. To them, I’d simply say that if you drive on a highway, walk on a sidewalk, use the postal service, send your kids to public school (or appreciate the [...]
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To [...]
I just realized I haven’t been posting about Zoe much lately. I’ll try to make up for that with a few photo posts, but let me kick-start the process by sharing a few things:
I’ve only played for a few hours, and I’ve only made it a few hundred feet outside the Vault so far, but what I’ve seen, I like very much. The character creation system is clever, starting you out as a baby, and learning how to move around and interact with people. Eventually you take an [...]
A couple weeks ago, Andy Samberg did a parody of Mark Wahlberg in a throwaway sketch called “Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals.” It was basically just Andy telling various animals “Say hi to your mother for me.” It was pretty funny, but not amazing, and I doubt anyone would have paid any attention to it [...]
How about a one-word review? Disappointing. The summary says “Batman takes on Deadshot, Killer Croc and other deadly foes in six anime-inspired short films.” The key words there are anime-inspired. This movie desperately wanted to be The Animatrix, but it failed because they got American writers and animators. The six shorts all have different styles, [...]
“Not only do I want an elite president. I want someone who is embarrassingly superior to me. Somebody who speaks 16 languages and sleeps two hours a night hanging upside down in a chamber they themselves designed.” – Jon Stewart
“If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” – The Joker, in The Dark Knight
