Mr. Nihil

2009-07-28T10:31:00.001-05:00

Did anybody else notice:
OK Senator James Inhofe has never provided proof that he was born in the US. His birth records aren't online, and, what is more telling, he has never published his credit card and utility bills in public forums to prove that he has been a resident of Oklahoma for anything like the requisite period to be a senator.
James Inhofe: Foreign spy? You decide.
Naturally, I only make this point to try to subvert the foreign agenda he's been pushing.
Sheesh.

2007-05-15T14:18:00.001-05:00

You, you, you,

You run and you run
and you stop

and then it's time for breakfast.
Mmmm grains.
Yeah.

2007-04-26T19:02:00.000-05:00

When I'm with you, I feel dead.

2006-10-18T14:49:00.000-05:00

She didn't come in from a car, but she did come in from the parking lot.
Her easy smile and crooked teeth looked like every girl down the lane that every boy knew when he was of a certain age, and began to become interested in such things. She was wearing a pleasing fish-net knit skirt of an aquamarine color which, again, was of that time when a young man first begins to know what it means when the older people talk about first noticing young ladies. Under the skirt, she wore blue and orange striped panties, clearly visible when she faced one directly and the sun shone on her. She walked with an unworried expression that said with certainty that she was enjoying a lovely day, and that nothing would spoil it. When she walked into the room, twelve heads turned to the door. It was as though the men with the keyboards could smell what had happened, and knew what they must do.
She paused, momentarily, in the portal, observing the gloom as her eyes adjusted. She sached across the stained concrete floor, and into twelve pieces of fiction as twenty four hands slapped keys furiously, trying to capture the perfection of the moment that had just occurred.

2006-10-18T14:41:00.000-05:00

It's that time again.

2006-04-22T23:16:00.000-05:00

I just finished listening to Anansi Boys (Yes, After Toshi, for them as is counting).
OK, so first, Let me say, the book was

***CRAPPY SPOILERS FOLLOW***

good. Lenny Henry is awesome, and the story moves, despite its large and sprawling nature.

***END CRAPPIEST SPOILERS EVAR***

I'm also going to see about getting American Gods on Audiobook, as Toshi thinks she'll be more likely to experience it (even if she doesn't read it) if it's on CD/Audiofiles. I'm a little afraid, though, that part of it is just that I want to listen to Lenny Henry reading for another four or five hours.
So, I can get it if I sign up for Audible dot Com. It looks good, but I can't actually tell if it is.
Anybody know? Anybody still read this thing?

2006-04-02T01:08:00.000-06:00

This is just too great not to link to. They suckered me in, I gotta say.

2006-01-17T00:33:00.000-06:00

Everybody fail to limbo!

2005-11-20T00:16:00.000-06:00

Wow. It's Saturday. Our show opens in just about two weeks.
The link to Violet Crown is here.

2005-10-25T23:42:00.000-05:00

Man, extra innings are really irritating.

2005-10-25T05:39:00.000-05:00

Ok, so if you have a link to a site which is selling viagra or cheap anti-depressants, you're wasting your time posting here. Nobody who reads this site is depressed, and nobody who reads this site will click on your link. Sorry. It's not personal. My friends are just kinda mean about that stuff. They write nasty paragraphs that say things like "my friends won't click on your stuff." They're mean. 'N Stuff.

2005-10-23T03:29:00.000-05:00

Hey Petunia! How's things?
Whee!

2005-10-23T03:06:00.000-05:00

If you walk around the back of the building, you can still see the scorch marks. They aren't really bad, but they are certainly noticeable. If you look closely, you can even see the outline of a pigeon. It wasn't a terribly bad burn, but it is the result of illegal action. In fact, it's about the best evidence of that same illegal action available. One cannot fault the neighbors for being somewhat angry. I dislike the birds as well, but not as personally as they seem to have taken it. They run into my windows during the day, with the only half-believable excuse of not having seen the glass. I, for one, don't believe it for a moment, but one copes where one can. If they hit my windows with malevolent intent, they have at least not caused any damage.
The neighbors, though, have caused actual damage. I'm not entirely sure how they managed to cause these long, black marks under the eves of my house, but I'm fairly certain they are the direct cause of the blackened avians in my yard.
I visited the neighbors. I suppose there are worse circumstances under which to get to know your near cohabitators. I have agreed not to press charges, and I will pay for the repairs. In return, they promise to explain the process by which they caused the birds' combustion.
I'm giddy with anticipation.

2005-10-23T03:04:00.000-05:00

I love bumping into something I didn't notice the first time. I just watched the Halloween episode of Freaks&Geeks. It has a great review of Crime & Punishment in it.
Is it good?
I don't know yet. Everybody's name is real weird and long.

2005-10-02T00:17:00.000-05:00

Huh. That's funny.
It seems that my angry is broken.

2005-08-19T12:23:00.000-05:00

When you’re tired of the same four blips over and over again, you’re tired of life. That’s what my imaginary friend always said to me and it’s what I’m contractually obligated to believe. You can’t take it with you, unless “it” is defined as “all the happiness in the world for some poor, sad loser.” Take it or leave it, it’s what you get. I like expressions like that, like “Believe it or Not!” They say “I’m lying. You can choose to ignore this fact at your own peril.”
When you’re tired of “Ain’t no Holla Back Girl” by the incomparable (which means, please, don’t compare her to anything or she might look bad) Gwenn Steffannii and her little Japanese chamber maids, when you’re tired of “Hip Hop” and its bastard clones, you’re tired of working for eight hours in a place that smells of sweat and health food. No, not a brothel, although that certainly has its upsides. No, at this point one is considering becoming bored with ones current nocturnal activities. One may already be sick of a loud woman with a thick New Jersey Accent calling one at midnight (OR SO) and saying, in effect, I know you’re already asleep, I know you hoped never to hear from me again, but godamnit, please, won’t you come in. Saying, You’re My Only Hope!
Backing oneself into a corner is a fine way to ensure the soft hearted something to do with our time. Ahhhh, to be a hard hearted bastard, to be the imminently hate-able fellow I can so often see in my Mind’s Eye, I can so often hear in my Mind’s Ear, I can so often understand is so absolutely right when he tells me to tell certain people to, frankly and simply, shut the hell up and go the hell away.
What could be worse than life? Well, says the resident wiseass, death. That’s a sentence fragment and it hurts to see it there, doesn’t it? Yess. Of course it does.
It’s always the end of time. It’s been the end of time since time began and it’ll be the end of time in a million years. Remember: don’t live life like this was your last second; this IS your last second, and so is THIS! Aaaaggh!! It never ends.
But that’s a fallacy, isn’t it? It ends elegantly and alone. It ends suddenly and with great gusto. It ends because that’s the natural order and no amount of nasty will change that, so why not be positive and admit that life is beautiful and, if not eternal, at least sometimes very, very long? If you want to realize precisely how long life can be, sit for eight hours and learn to look forward to putting bottles of fruit punch into a cooler for people far more fit than you to drink. This will teach you precisely how long life is. Christ, has it only been an hour? Well, money in the pot, as they say. Well, “they” don’t say it. My imaginary friend says it. And my contract says it, too. Making you sign a contract when only a few minutes old seems a bit harsh, but that’s one of the bylaws of the club. Life must seem a bit harsh until you look at it from another perspective. Then it needs to look very, very easy.
“Easy like a high school boy,” says my imaginary friend. He needs help, though. He’s got problems. I’m sending him to the imaginary shrink tomorrow.

2005-06-25T17:29:00.000-05:00

Batman Begins was a very pretty movie, and it goes ahead and plays Batman as a horror-type monster sorta character. And bully for it. The story is classic Batman and plenty fun. And now for the massivest spoilers of all.

Seriously, big, ugly spoilers follow.

If you want to be surprised and you read the next couple of sentences, you will fail.

I mean it.

**Spoilers An' Stuff**

Batman loses. Not as far as the movie itself, but the movie sets up all the ingredients for failure. When the movie ends, about (let's be conservative) three or four thousand Gothamites have been dosed with a powerful halucinagenic drug which causes irreversable mental damage, to the tune of homicidal mania, in the space of hours, with the possability of the first mass-manufactured doses a week or more off. Morgan Freeman took the antidote with him on the day that this large segment of the city was dosed, and said, in so many words, that he would need a week to set up mass manufacture. The next day, by the way, he isn't setting up mass manufacture. He's taking over the company.
That's OK, though, right? I mean, he gave the formula to the police for mass manufacture, right? No. In fact, they didn't. When the dose is given to Gordon, no instructions come with it. Also, what is given to the police is not the formula, it's dose of the antidote. They police labs still have to get it to a lab that can reverse engineer it and mass manufacture it. Let's assume they're faster than Morgan Freeman. if so, they're still looking at more than a day.
But that's OK too, right? I mean, it's just the poor people anyway.
It's too bad. Until Batman lost massively, It was a good movie. Hell, even after that it's good. It's just sad that he loses and his city is, if not destroyed, at least crippled.
That's not to mention that there is now no mass transit in the city.
Oh, yeah, and if anybody has a humidifier or a plant mister, you better watch the heck out. Or a tea kettle; or a coffee pot; or a propensity for having water go down ones esophagus. You get the idea.

2005-05-27T06:24:00.000-05:00

I can articulate my disappointment about Hitchhiker's Guide. In the scene in which Ford runs up to the soon ex-site of Dent's home with a cart full of beer, then takes Dent off to the pub, there are some jokes from the book which were omitted. These were taken out in favor of the joke "BEER! Huh-huh-huh." It seems to me that if you feel that "BEER!" is a funny joke, you can laugh your way through the movie quite safely. It contains many such jokes, among them "NOKIA;" "TWO-HEADS;" and "HE GOT NO LEGS!"
I say Americans are smarter than that. I say we've come very far since the stereotype was true and we would actually laugh because somebody had beer or a phone. I say as a society we're as smart as the British Disney jerks who wrote the movie, and probably as smart as the British jerks who laughed at the Hitchhiker's Guide when it was a radio play. Hell, we're among the smartest jerks on the planet, no matter what those other jerks say. We can handle a movie where the guy doesn't get the girl, and we can handle the idea that the government is out to get us and hard to deal with. I say Americans could handle a horrible bureaucracy scene in which the horrible bureaucracy was actually hard to deal with, and in which the forms did not take six to eight seconds each to fill out.
That's what kicked my ass about the movie. I think the average American moviegoer is capable of laughing at convolution and able to leave a movie without rioting, even if the guy doesn't get the girl.

"I don't get it, Maw. Sure, he was a whahny jerk, but whah didn't he get tha girl in tha end of tha movin' pitcher?"
"Don't worry, Hammie. Jus' keep laughin' about tha beer."
"A-huh huh. Beer. That's funny."

2005-05-27T06:23:00.000-05:00

Staying on top of the news is increasingly important these days and here on Public Television, we're trying to help. Tonight on Newswatch, we'll kill two daed frogs.

2005-05-26T16:49:00.000-05:00

I saw Episode III. Lord help me, I enjoyed it.
Bad stuff first: They need to make light sabers out of something besides Water Weenies. Something you can, y'know, hold on to. The question isn't 'will he drop his weapon,' it's 'who drops his weapon first?'
The names are stupid, but after "Dooku" who's surprised? I mean, sure, the bad guy is a Bond villain and his name is "Grievous." OK, whatever.

I-III are pretty. The paintings are good, the sets are neat and the people are movie stars. But, y'know, I like dirty muppets. I think that having a real actual thing is usually better than having a computer-generated thing. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I've seen the first two Terminator movies again since they were new. The effects are laughable. It's not that they are bad, it's just that they look crappy compared to what we're used to seeing now. Tosha pointed out, the star-fight sequence already looks a little dated and the technology is, what, as much as a year old? I don't quite agree with her. I thought it was pretty, and I enjoyed the opening scenes.
I just found that if I sat back and told myself "try to enjoy it," I usually could.
I think the move to go ahead and play off the revelation that Palpatine is Sith (I know, I'm sorry. I should have put a spoiler warning on this. Sorry) is either a really smart move or a really dumb one. I think Lucas is thinking like a Presidential candidate and so is worried about how future generations will view the movies. It's possible that, seeing the movies in order, a new viewer will be surprised. It does, however, kind of clash with the slow revelation of the emperor in the second, older trilogy.
You know what? This is still about the best series in movies (OK, it is if you count it as a nine-episode series with Indiana Jones as the third trilogy, which I do). Say what you will about Lord of the Rings, I love the pulp and this is the king of pulp.
They promised us "fell into a volcano" and they didn't give it to us. But they promised us "Darth Vader as a boy" and they delivered in spades. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman deliver moments of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher that show that at least somebody showed these kids the older movies and explained why these things were important.
And they don't let JarJar talk. That's good, right?
I dunno. It's a movie. You've already seen it. What am I doing talking about it?

2005-05-26T16:46:00.000-05:00

My Rambunctious, Influential brother has started upon the path to music production. He and Orville produced a 6-song EP for Hope Irish. It's really, really good. I'm in the process of copying a pile of them for her. Good stuff.

2005-05-23T00:40:00.000-05:00

Show was good.
King Kong for Christmas.
I gotta write a buncha songs this summer.
Oh, yeah, and that whole 'get married' thing, too.

2005-05-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

Hey. Songs of the Pogo's available in rerelease. There's a link on Amazon here. An stuff.

2005-04-30T22:15:00.000-05:00

Apples to Road Apples

Why Incredibles is better than Hitchhiker's Guide

Let's face facts. If you watch both movies, last summer's The Incredibles from Disney's Pixar studios and this spring's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Touchstone, it's very hard to fail to notice that Incredibles is superior in every way. Why? Let's take a look.
To be quite honest, the jokes in Incredibles aren't that much better. Gazerbeam; Nomanisan Island; Syndrome; Dashiel "Dash" Par; Edna "E" Mode; these aren't classic jokes. They aren't jokes that people will repeat for decades to come. This ain't Who's on First. And yet the movie is damn funny (where appropriate) and damn tense (same).
Compare that to the source material of the Guide. People are repeating that stuff now, some decades later. People consider that a classic of twentieth century pop lit. An alarming lot of people spend an alarming lot of time reading and rereading the Guide series so as to have the lines memorized by rote. It's like Tolkein in that. People care a lot about the books.
And good on 'em.
But let's ignore the books (Yeah, I know. Why bring it up if you're going to ignore it? Why, to throw the hammers into relief). Let's look at the movie as a work on its own. Why does the humor in this movie fall flat and the action plod? Hammers and pride.
The Guide doesn't make jokes. It

tells you what to laugh at

laugh here

. It tells a joke which might have been a perfectly forgettable chuckle line in another movie, then tells it again, then reminds you that it told that joke, and then has another character tell the same damn joke again in the same way, just to make sure you understood that it a)was a joke and b)was something which the movie makers believed to be very very funny and witty.
I'll take the horrible arm joke, which will give you no plot spoilers, don't worry, as an example.
At one point, Arthur decides he needs a weapon and so says to Marvin, "Give me a hand." Cut to Arthur carrying an arm as a gun. Cut to Marvin walking alone with only one arm, saying "Give me a hand, well, I only have one arm, now I've only got one arm, cant even fly the ship with one arm, we'll see, give me hand, only one arm." Marvin makes jokes like this every time he shows up until the arm is mysteriously reattached and the incident forgotten. Before this, of course, we cut again to Arthur waving the arm right in the camera. See? 'Cause he's got this arm, and it's Marvin's, and he said "Give me a hand" and there was this hand he was waving in the camera, and it's 'cause he said "Give me a hand," get it, hand?
Compare this with the equally stupid "Nomanisan Island" from The Incredibles. That's a pretty dumb joke, honestly. I like the delivery, though, 'cause it's disguised in the movie. There's only one island in the movie and if you've seen it you know. If not, that's OK. This joke is delivered once over a radio and the word is pronounced "Numanasan." Most people don't pick up on the joke the first time they see the movie.
The Guide movie uses hammers. It drives every joke home as if it were speaking to an audience of Weimaraners (the slow but friendly dogs. I have no issue with Germans as a group). The Incredibles tells jokes as incidental to the story, the Guide tells jokes because it seems to feel some need to MAKE BIG FUNNY DID YOU NOTICE?
But the books aren't about the plot. OK, this is true (see why I bring them up?). The books are about carefully, lovingly, obsessively crafted dialog and humor which show an understanding that a joke need only be told once (OK, more or less) to be funny. The movie, though, is full of things which are clearly lines from the books and which were clearly jokes at some point, but which have had all the funny cut out of them. Let me give an example. Is this a joke:
A. What kind of sandwich do you want today?
B. Salami, but not if you got pickles!
A. All I have is Ham.
B. Ham's good.
No. It isn't. It's perhaps phrased like a joke. It is certainly a collection of statements. It is not, however, actually a joke. This is the impression the movie gives. For example:
A. The plans have been on display for a year.
B. I had to go in a basement!
A. But you did see them, and you are aware that we were planning...
This is played as a joke, as is Ford's giving the construction crew beer. Haha. Beer. That's great. He gave them beer. Haha. Oh, wait. That isn't funny. It's random. He happened to have a shopping cart full of beer and he gave it away.
As for the action: it isn't fair to compare the two, is it? One is a superhero movie about people alternately learning the nature of superiority and playing superspy, and the other is a nihilistic suggestion that sometimes the hero isn't the guy who saved everything, he's more likely the guy who the book is about.
And yet the movie tries to play off the story as containing action. The "rescuing Trillian" sequence is played for action and comedy. It falls flat on both. The jokes are still overwraught and the action consists of us waiting for the blank faces to stop popping back and forth on and off the screen and the horrible joke to just please, please stop. Yes, you have an arm. Yes, you are doing fucking paperwork. Hardy har har. The paperwork goes quickly (what? yes.) and the action plods.
Alright. I'll quit.
I'm just going to say again, The Incredibles is subtle and plays jokes as being, Oh, I don't know, a nice thing to add to a story. The Guide uses hammers to remind you that it contains jokes instead of plot or characterization.
Love conquers all. Sheesh. Grumble.

2005-04-27T02:17:00.000-05:00

Hey! Congratulations to Teya on the birth of her new baby girl. Yay!