Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
I've given this a re-watch.
The opening credits were great.
The settings and costumes were good even if the actors weren't. If you want to see Dane DeHaan in his element, see Chronicle. Cara Delevigne ... um...
Except Clive Owen. He's a treasure. Any actor who can convincingly win a gunfight with a carrot has got the chops.
The attack over planet Mül was objectively well done and the crash scene was impressive.
It's a good bit of fun in much the same way as The Fifth Element.
Soil farming.
I sh!t you not, we need this. Topsoil in many parts of the world is leached of nutrients, or packed with chemical by-products of insecticide, herbicide, and fertilizers, or the topsoil has eroded away. Or, it's buried under concrete, asphalt, glass, and steel.
Soil farming for vertical farms, indoor cultivation at home, and replacing some other food growth options just makes good sense.
3D-Printed Houses
Hear me out. Right now, they're small and ugly as f*ck; but that's a design issue. Getting the materials and designs right can encourage mass adoption of sustainable design, waste sequestration, and abundant housing.
I'd be all about a prequel series for Morgan Freeman's character in Se7en. Only if David Fincher returned to direct through.
Guatemala's ruling class spent months trying to negate the democratic election of anti-corruption, centre-left, progressivist, social-democrat, now-President Bernardo Arévalo. Certainly, the ruling class will screw with the whole system, and, possibly, they will attempt to kill him.
Bernardo is the son of former president Juan José Arévalo, whose time in office immediately followed an uprising that deposed U.S. backed dictator Jorge Ubico in 1945. Hate runs deep.
Keep in mind that the tenuous peace in Guatemala is consistently marred by gang violence, institutional corruption, kidnappings, and murder. This ray of light for the campesinos, indigenous people, and impoverished majority is, hopefully, sustainable with a mandate to improve Guatemala into a place where people can live. It would behoove (United States of) Americans to support this president as he could move the needle on making life liveable in Guatemala and stemming the flow of refugees and migrant workers to the North.
Some might say that "your perspective is distorted." things are incredible for the top 10% of the socio-economic scale and getting better by most metrics (do not look at the numbers for maternal and infant mortality).
While we certainly have our incredibly massive, systemic challenges to overcome, like climate change (ha!), wealth inequality (ha ha!), and social problems (hahaha!), let's not forget how good we (when you say we, you certainly mean your ingroup) could have it if we tore down this corrupt edifice and built an efficient, sustainable, just world.
In 2007, I, a non-white non-Korean, took a job in South Korea. Then, I took another. Then, at the third job, I was hired, but the owner's brother was amenable to some of the more racist thoughts that guided the approach to business in SK. He thought I would hurt the business. He resisted hiring another non-white, non-Korean.
The owner asked me to write a letter. Instead of saying, "that's not my job", I wrote the letter. I made the case. They hired another non-white, non-Korean after me.
I'm still pretty proud of that letter.
I could hate on the Dark Knight all day. The month it came out, my brother put it best, "It's two movies. A good, short, Joker movie and a bad, long, Batman movie."
When you watch this film and only the Joker scenes, its 10x better.
I saw Being There about 10 years ago, and it was made 35 years before that. It is a masterwork.
I worked with teacher named Mr. Zero for a year. He was super cool.
Also, if you haven't seen it, the Zero Effect is a solid movie with Ben Stiller and Bill Pullman. The latter plays Daryl Zero.
Brazil (1985)
Chinatown (1974)
Conspiracy (2001)
Key question here. I'd take it at 37 and go back to being 17 with the skills, knowledge, and experiences and most importantly income of my 37 year-old self. But, I'd pass myself off as 18. Unless, of course, it's not a secret. In which case the strategy totally changes.
If it's known and knowable that I took this drug, then I'd take it at 55 and de-age to 35. Then, when my kids are in their teens and tweens, I'll have the energy for their B.S. Also, when I retire at 95 (b/c seriously, retirement wont be a thing for me), I'll only be 75 and I'll still be able to fight off some of the horde of lawyer-bots, advertisclones, and chain letters that are coming after my pension.
So... What you're saying is, I need a cat.
Good luck finding housing in Canada, bud.
This is basically what I told people when I started to watch some of the most amazing international and documentary cinema in the early 00s. Ciudade de Deus, La Cité d'enfants Perdus, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain, La Vita è Bella, Der Untergang, Lola Rennt, 올드 보이, Mononoke Hime, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Whale Rider. Documentaries by Adam Curtis or Errol Morris. So many people just don't know.
Hahaha. I'm a teacher. It is better to err on the side of caution. Never know when I'm actually sleep-typing an email and forget to be cordial.
It's more about self-discipline and self-awareness rather than self-censorship. The self-censorship kicks in when I'm in the classroom, and some kid feels the need to act a damn fool.
S01 and S02. After that, questionable.
Unsaid so far: Samurai Jack.
Reminds me of El Salvadoran prisoners.
Funny, I didn't mind that the characters' motivations were written differently. Much more about their pasts and their circumstances than their outward emotional states, their irrational fears or momentary actions, and their short-term gains. It more all about the situation, the collective motivations, and the achievable ends.
I liked reading a Chinese sci-fi novel. It was alien twice.
Take it from a die-hard cynical realist, Ted Lasso is heartwarming and inspiring in just the right measure without being terribly saccharine or campy. Very well written as well. The third season faltered a bit in the beginning, I thought, but it ended well.
Private maps that show you where you've been and what missions you need to complete there.
Right now, all I have is the thermal map of photos linked to a Google account, and that is way too creepy because the location-based data is housed with a transnational corporation and is dependent on photos I feed to the machine.
The Way of the Gun (2000), 46% fresh. I really, actually do like this movie. I know, Ryan Phillipe makes things complicated. Like, starting in the first scene with Sarah Silverman.
"There's always cheese at a mousetrap."
The problem that this movie faced was that there was no reward for having a long attention span. Critically panned, the Way of the Gun rewards those who get carried along in the story; those who understand the roles the characters play in each others' lives, the Shakespearean knit in the fabric.
Longbaugh and Parker are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern witnessing the collapse of the house of and unborn Hamlet, whose supposed parents are a mob underboss and his trophy wife. His actual parents are at the shootout where he was born.
This is a good movie. Watch it.
The first time I crossed this track was with the video.
Masterpiece.
So, Jumper.
There's a book on this topic, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.
Yeah, I don't mind it. Thor is a name and a title/power. God (presumably) is a name, and Thor has the power of a god.
Prince is a title. It's also a name. And, to some musicians, Prince is a god.
It'd be rare to win an argument by invoking Prince, but there you go.
It's a long lasting, constantly evolving, multi-versal fluke.
We can't see, experience, or detect most of the universe — read: existence — let alone measure it. That pretty much means, to me anyway, we can't explain it.
Explaining existence, then, is limited to explaining my own perception of existence. To be brief: The things that exist got here the same way we did and use the same materials and rules. Conscious beings stay in the universe by maintaining consciousness; for us, that generally means being alive, awake, and alert — in that order. Upon death, consciousness ends, or departs, or continues (no one knows) and our corporeal form goes back to existing as atoms in other states within the environment. Present existence, then, pregnant by the ghosts of all existences that has gone before and is carrying to term all existences that will exist after. It's an endless, cyclical flow of atoms, energies, and absences. A crossroads of Space and Time culminating in experiential states and chains of causality. Billions of years in a blink.
Other conscious beings may operate or perceive differently. We can't individuall confirm or know. That's another of those rules.
That said, we only get to ride this existence thing for a short time. Build up your XP and use your one and only life doing good. Not necessarily well, but good.
Imagine standing outside of Time and Space and making a divine survey of the grand tapestry of the possible. It would look like math painted onto bubbles that glow from within, I think. That's what Existence may be.
Trigonometry
I saw Baise Moi (Kiss/Rape Me) in a theatre just before it was banned. I was not expecting that
This is about the same time that Kids, Gummo, Happiness, and the Brown Bunny were all released.
Each film is fucked up for its own reasons. Though, I understand, Salo and A Serbian Film are next level fucked up.
"... Two boats were launched from eastern Colombia toward the Caribbean coast of Venezuela north of Caracas, carrying approximately 60 Venezuelan dissidents and two American former Green Berets employed as mercenaries by Silvercorp. Both boats were intercepted before they reached land. At least six Venezuelan dissidents in the first boat were killed, and all but four of the invaders were captured during the attempted landing or subsequent search operations, including the two Americans from the second boat, whose interrogations were broadcast on state television.
Venezuelan intelligence agencies and the Associated Press (AP) had prior knowledge of the operation. Commentators and observers described the operation as amateurish, underfunded, poorly organized, impossible, and a suicide mission, and divergent narratives led to questions about how the plot unfolded. Sources criticized the poor planning and execution, alternating between characterizing Operation Gideon as an attempted invasion, infiltration, raid, ambush, assassination or coup.
Alcohol is a poison.
Best finale of any series.
Take it from one who quit piano at 16 after having started as a 4-year-old... the regret runs deep.
Take the stupid lessons, buy a $100 keyboard and a pair of headphones, and PLAY. Its hard and you'll suck for a time, but treat it as play. Laugh at your mistakes and revel in your success.
2 bars at a time. That's how you build.
I have nostalgia for my late-teens early 20s cartoon consumption. I was still watching Batman:TAS and the 90s Spider-Man series. There were flashes of high-intensity (if not well told) brilliance from the 90s Real Adventures of Jonny Quest series. I have to admit, the CGI they used was not as well executed as Reboot. Darkwing Duck, Peter Pan and the Pirates, and Gargoyles were shows what I looked back on fondly.
Daria, Clone High, and Ren and Stimpy all made an impact on me as a young adult. Daria, for its sardonic, anti-establishment stance. Clone High for its mockery of sitcoms and rom-coms and teen angst. Ren and Stimpy for pushing everything past its limit.
In the end, though, it was Samurai Jack and 90s X-Men that stood head and shoulders above them all. X-Men because it was what I collected and knew the best. Samurai Jack because it was cinematic, well- paced, and offered me something that no other TV show, movie, cartoon series, or comic book did or could: "... [a] fool [who] seeks to return to the past to undo the future that is Aku!"
Lucy (2018) - some mild insanity, remorselessness
Genie from Aladdin (1992) ‐ everything is a joke
Bruce Almighty (2003) - can't actually control himself
I'm going to go off on a comic-book tangent here:
Wielder of Infinity Gauntlet (1991, 2018) - potential insanity, later radiation scarring
Phoenix Force (1976) ‐ heavy insanity, desire to consume planets (see: Dark Phoenix Saga (1980), (X-Men '92, S03E11), Avengers vs. X-men (2012))
Omega-Level mutants - tendency toward megalomania (see: Jean Grey, Magneto, Kid Omega, 4 horsemen of Apocalypse... even Ororo Munroe (goddess), though Iceman seems well-adjusted)
Beyond - remorselessness, destruction of universes (see: Secret Wars (1984), Time Runs Out Event (2014))
The Forever War is a book that I'll always point to as a gateway into reading sci-fi, not just watching it.
Such a good book.
From the TV adaptation of Asimov's Foundation
Cleon XIII: Orders the deaths of 1551 innocent people to make an example of one person.
Cleon XVI: Oversees the destruction of the Foundation in truly spectacular fashion.
My first full run of DS9 is going so well. What's amazing is the amount of single fatherhood in the show.
Lilo and Stitch is the best Disney movie.
Many, many spoilers below. But, seriously, this movie is 21 years old. Get over yourselves.
Check it: a young girl adopts an illegal alien (killing machine from deep space) and protects him from the U.S. (and galactic) government (Military-Industrial complexes), while keeping her incredibly depressed sister (slices both ways) from giving up completely as they keep their Indigenous Hawaiian family together in their co-opted homeland. One sister works a series of dead-end tourism jobs; the other has anger issues. The hate each other and love each other fiercely, though they are about 12 years apart in age.
Oh, yeah, and their parents are dead.
Meanwhile, the alien is a political refugee and freedom fighter fleeing from his own people who want him dead for —get this— existing. A lab-grown, indestructible terrorist, he seeks asylum on an island — but he can't swim.
He does learn to surf.
The only downside to this film is that Disney produced it. And Elvis.
"Ohana means family. Nobody gets left behind or forgotten."