Obsolete Your Idols

But I just got around to starting the Warren Ellis lj novel.

For Yule Heath gave me a copy of Carcassonne, the Deluxe edition with The River, Cathedrals & Lake-Inns, Pigs and Builders. He and I sat down and played it yesterday and it made for a longer, higher scoring game with more things to remember but still a lot of fun. It'd probably be even more fun with a larger number of players.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is far funnier than I had any right to expect. From the opening short cartoon to the closing credit sequences, this movie tickles several ribs. It's got the mandatory quotable dialogue, the artfully artless acting, the exquisitely overly prolonged shot, which should make this movie a delight for fans of the B movie genre.

Of course, it's obviously deliberately bad and that's just fine. Think of it as hipsters sitting around telling a ghost story inspired by Plan 9 From Outer Space. Or don't think of it as anything at all and just revel in the winking badness.

I could tell you that I believe this to be a fantastic movie. But as a scientist, I believe in nothing.

UPDATE 2007/12/30: Seen Again
I saw it a second time and it was, if possible, even more amusing. Possibly because I knew what to expect of it this time out and so I was able to pay more attention to the nuances of acting and dialogue. Still heartily recommended for dumb fun.

I saw Lost in Translation and it was everything I'd heard it was. I was hooked from the opening title shot right until the end of the scrolling credits [despite a pressing need to rid myself of the previously consumed liter of water and pint of zero carb beverage]. It's a tastefully understated story about a pair of tastefully misunderstood characters. I'm sure it has homages to many famous romances but someone like a film critic will have to bring them to light for you, the review reading masses.

Here's my recommendation to you: do not drag your feet on seeing this film if you haven't. Go. Go with someone you love or go alone. Don't go with some insensitive brute like myself. It's a bittersweet story with a sound-track which almost but not quite distracts. For the first time in my life, this movie caused me to enjoy karaoke. So that's something.

It's got a lot of Japanese in it, so maybe someone who speaks Japanese would find it more or less funny than I did; as a cloddish non-speaker of Japanese, I could identify with the sense of confusion the characters express at the torrent of unknown words and inexplicable directives. I think it's probably rated R because of some breasts seen in a strip bar. I don't know; I've been to strip bars. The strip bar scene here is almost G-ish, by comparison with the reality. But maybe the Rating Board don't get out a lot. Just, you know, close your eyes, if you hate breasts, or are scared of them, or whatever, when you see Bob Harris [Bill Murray] waiting alone in a loud place.

My favorite part of this was Bill Murray's expressiveness, especially in contexts where he was embarrassed. A suitable maturity of the inchagrinable Peter Venkmen of Ghostbusters. This movie could have been improved by cutting the swimming pool scenes so that it would have ended about ten minutes earlier and reading closing credits wouldn't have been a feat of bladder control.

Of the previews I saw, the only one that caught my interest then and there was Monsieur Ibrahim. Omar Sharif! Some young boy! It's like Batman and Robin, without all the fetish wear. Incidentally, a full price ticket is about one hundred fifty percent the cost of a small popcorn and small soda. That has nothing to do with the movie, I just like numbers.

The pundits on the Right are certainly Lazy and quite possibly Insane. Read Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, for details. I was horrified and disgusted by the behaviors considered acceptable by the Right and the media but having the medicine in a solution of FrankenHumor made it possible to read and not throw it across the room. No links out of here because it's freakin' early and my eyes won't focus, yet.

In much the same way that Declare reminded me of Cryptonomicon, the book Newton's Cannon by J. Gregory Keyes reminded me of Quicksilver. That is, similar core stories, similar or shared characters and settings, but an overtly fantastical, rather than science-fantasy spin on things.

I rather liked Newton's Cannon a lot [if you know what I mean {and I think you do!}] and would advise anyone grumbling as to the lack of fulfilling pirates in Quicksilver to pick up a copy of Newton's Cannon, rip out chapter 20 from that book, and paste it in to Quicksilver somewhere. Now that's a satisfying pirate dialogue! With Blackbeard! And young Ben Franklin!

Crossing the angles another direction, the familiars of this book remind me quite a bit of the lamia from Tim Powers's The Stress of Her Regard, which would seem to tie them in to a rather neat triangle of ideas, a perfect Midnight Triangle to sail a 7th Sea campaign through. So that's one good use for this book. I don't feel a compelling urge to read the other two books in this trilogy, but I'm glad I picked this up and read it.

Pretty decent fantasy [tangentially, what is it with Seattle writers and Ben Franklin? Louise Marley's Glass Harmonica is somewhere on my to read pile and that one also features Franklin prominently] with only a slight touch of Jordan's gender-isolation to infuriate me.

I read No Logo and it was depressing and still pertinent. It won't cheer you up to read it. But you might get a better idea how things got the way they are and where they'll go from here. I don't have any solutions. I'm still trying to formulate the questions.

Thinking about distributed revision control systems.

Here are three I'm aware of.

• arch
• darcs
• monotone

Actually, I didn't know anything at all the ones not arch until I read Colin Walters's blog via Planet Debian.

I took a screen shot of bbs100 with ANSI colors in terminus font.

For people who hate colors, here's one in white on black.

Devil pointed me at this collection of early advertising.

Whoa. I know, I'm doubtlessly late to the party on this one, too. Looks like it'd interest me a truckload more than Friendster and their ilk.

I don't have time to keep up on cool stuff, I have a life.

From the Unknown Armies Mailing List: a collection of images and text descriptions of creepy places. Good for Call of Cthulhu or UA, one supposes.

Check this out. Site with some tools about personal data. G'wan. You know you want it.