I seem to have pieces of dreams broken off in my mind. They are beautiful—jagged chunks of obsidian, thin crystals of amethyst and emerald, unpolished lumps of opal and sapphire—but painful. I find myself reaching up and gingerly touching the side of my head, half-expecting to find a gleaming shard protruding from my temple. It's difficult to sleep when I can't get comfortable, wondering if I will dislodge something in my restless night.
I wonder if something is trying to break free of me? Is there now simply more of me than will fit comfortably in my skull?
...is when you hear the echoes of the screams of the world reverberating through your mind. I don't know what that dream was about, and I think I'm glad of that.
Work remains a relentless nightmare. It's gotten bad enough that when I'm trying to do anything else, anything to try to relax, my mind keeps coming back to the office. I should just move in my office for a few weeks until I can get it under control.
Also, in spite of years of fighting against it, I'm starting to develop signs of becoming a bitter, sadistic IT guy. This depresses me, as I really don't want to end up in that particular stereotype. On the other hand, exchanges like this bring me unwholesome delight:
mkh: May I help you?
luser: Hey, I can't find my e-forms since we upgraded e-mail. Where are they?
mkh: Did you read the instructions I sent you last week?
luser: I don't have time to read instructions, just do it for me!
mkh: Okay, no problem. Here, let me just open up your e-mail...
luser: What, wait! You can do that?
mkh: Sure, I have to do it to fix your problem. Why, you don't have anything in there HR wouldn't like, do you?
luser: No, no. Hey, can you just send me those instructions again? I can probably figure it our myself...
mkh: If you insist.
Sometimes it is hard to keep my innate tendency toward evil under control.
Okay, some of you kids are pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, so I'm looking for some suggestions. I want to build a better home theater than the piss-poor set-up I have right now, and I think I want to start with a real TV. I don't have cable, and I watch very little broadcast; most of my time at the glass teat is spent sucking down DVDs. So, what should I be looking at?
Here are the important parts of what I've got right now:
A little math (which thank god I didn't have to do!) tells me that my 27" TV is currently providing 262 sq. in. of letterbox viewing area. I'm too old to strain my eyes trying to take in detail on a tiny screen like that, at least not from the comfort of my recliner. It looks like I'll need to get a 42" widescreen to make a significant difference. Any of you have any suggestions as to specs to look for, specific brands to buy/avoid, etc.?
Oh, and I still have my fears about being robbed once I get a new TV. But I figure, what the hell. I have rental insurance, and I'm tired of sitting right in front of the TV to watch Maggie Gyllenhaal get spanked.
There is nothing quite as embarrassing to me as looking through my archives for a particular post, finding it, and realizing that it has a huge typo right in the first sentence. You know, reading my old entries is painful enough without the indignity of discovering that my fly has been down for months.
This is a wonderful idea. One word, sixty seconds to write about it.
Back a few years ago three good friends of mine would celebrate their May birthdays together, calling themselves the May Babies. I've pretty much lost touch with two of them, sadly, but it's interesting to see that there's another cluster among my friends.
Kaydee celebrated his birthday Thursday, undoubtedly in much the fashion depicted above.
The inimitable Maud (the cute one on the left, as opposed to the cute one on the right) had her birthday Wednesday.
And my non-websited friend Diana added another candle last week (although the party was on Saturday).
I know that at least one other person I read regularly had a birthday this month. If it was you, tell me in the comments and I'll try to make it up to you. All I can offer as an excuse is that I've celebrated too many birthdays of my own.
Since so many visitors here are interested in the philosophy of (and speculation about) the new Matrix film, check out the highly-intelligent ongoing discussion at Revland. (Beware of spoilers, although I imagine the point's moot by now.)
I was going to write a three-tiered review of this film, with increasing levels of spoilers on separate pages, to avoid spoiling anyone's fun. However, I've decided that it is too much work for this particular film. So I'll keep the review simple and moderately spoiler-free.
The film was okay. (I saw it opening day with my co-workers, another "team-building exercise" to give us an excuse for a day off to see a geeky movie.) If you liked the action and fight scenes of the first one, you'll like this one, because it's more of the same. If you liked the pseudo-intellectual storyline of the first, well, it's more of the same of that, too. However, in both cases they upped the ante—the fights take advantage of new effects and CG technology to increase the bombast, and the "mythology" scenes take the preachiness and incoherence to a new level.
First, the fighting (since that's really what the movie's about). Keanu still knows kung-fu, and he also knows how to fight with swords and maces and polearms and other medieval ironwork. However, the script writes off the other cool tricks he learned in the first film with the word "upgrades." Basically, any fight scene with Neo left me cold, because he suffers from the Superman Syndrome. You know he isn't going to lose any fight, so the only thing the bad guys can do is endanger innocent bystanders. Unfortunately for the bad guys, Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and company have no concern for the lives of these innocent bystanders at all. By the end of the film it seems likely that thousands of ordinary people were killed during these battles.
As a side effect of Neo's invulnerability, I never cared about any fight he was in. The fights involving the secondary characters were more interesting, because the possibility existed for change. Also, knowing that the much-ballyhooed fight between Neo and Smith was all computer generated took some of the thrill out. I'm much more impressed with what can be done by one Jackie Chan and a wire than with a room full of programmers and a million dollars of hardware.
Now about the story. It's cool that the film makers are trying to make a slightly more cerebral action flick, and I applaud them for that. Bringing together gnosticism, Buddhism, solipsism, and some other quasi-trippy mental gymnastics will no doubt blow the minds of your average popcorn chomper. But there had better be some internal consistency when the dust settles, that's all I've got to say. Well, okay, and when they were doing the setup for the big blowout toward the end, and Morpheus was rambling on like some cut-rate Patton channeling Carlos Castaneda, I wanted to scream "Just shut the fuck up you pompous poseur!" But maybe that was just me.
Now I know this sounds like I hated the movie, and that's not true. (And for the record, I'm not a slavering fanboy who was disappointed after four years of furious masturbation anticipating the film; I didn't even see the first part in the theater.) I thought it was better than average summer fare, and I'm curious enough to go see the last one in November. You already know if it's the kind of movie you'll like, and if you are, go see it (as if you haven't already). If you don't usually like science-fiction action films, well, this one isn't going to make a believer out of you.
One final note, for those who've seen the film. There is a scene, an important scene, near the end of the film where I almost laughed out loud. It's supposed to be a touching, dramatic moment, and all I could think about was Christopher Reeves flying counter-clockwise around the earth. I know, I'm a sick man. So sue me.
In shuffling through some of my papers I came across an old music composition assignment, from the days when I was studying to be a composer. My jazz arrangement instructor gave us the assignment to write own changes to a nursery rhyme.
I would play and record it myself for your amusement, but I still don't have a PC which will record my keyboard effectively. However, for those in the audience musically-inclined (and I know several of you fit that description), feel free to amuse yourself with this bit of nonsense. (You can click the image for a full-size, printable version.) And hey, if anyone wants to record it and send it to me, I'll happily upload it.
Here's a picture of a sunset at a Miami bar. Water is good. Sunsets are good. Bars are good. All three combined is very good.
See you soon.
Hah. Is that title noxious enough for you? I'm in a pissy, nasty, horrible, overworked frame of mind, and unfortunately it looks like my weekend will be more of the same. On top of this I dreamed of being shot (again). But there's no reason for you to suffer for my angst. Please, take this photo of the cherry blossoms in Central Park, from my recent trip north.
Enjoy your weekend.
There's quite a show starting up over at Fairchild Tropical Garden. The largest flower in the world, amorphophallus titanum, is starting to bloom. And by largest, I mean the blossom (or inflorescence, as it is properly called), is over six feet tall, growing at a rate of up to six inches a day right before it opens.
Of course, if this was just a big flower it would be interesting, but not really a media event. No, the plant's real claim to fame is... well, let's just say that the common name in its native Indonesia is "corpse flower." When the bloom opens it releases a stench reminiscent of a a half-ton a over-ripe carrion. It is said to be one of the most foul odors on the planet, a fragrance so overpowering that you can catch a whiff from hundreds of feet away, so strong that visitors are warned that they will likely vomit, an olfactory offense so vile that the horticulturist who tends it wears a gas mask, because the remedies suggested by the coroners who deal with floaters failed to make a dent in it. This is the king hell of all smells, and it only lasts a few hours.
This time it is particularly significant, since there are actually two of them opening. The original, named Mr. Stinky by the staff, hasn't bloomed since 2001, and this year he is joined by his little sister, Audrey III. This is Audrey's cotillion, as she's never bloomed before. The last time Stinky cut loose over 5,000 people came to experience it themselves, and this year I intend to be one of them. Yes, that's right, I am willingly throwing myself into the fumes to bring you a first hand (nose?) report on the phenomenon. Provided I can make it there, of course; it's a narrow window of opportunity.
There's a Miami Herald article which provides a little more information, perhaps enough to whet the appetite of any locals who might be reading. But if you can't just justify a trip to Miami to observe the rare event, the Fairchild StinkyCam is here to serve. (And if by some chance your computer is equipped with olfactory transmission protocol you'll be able to smell it like a native, too.) Dr. Craig Allen, the man behind the gas mask, is even maintaining a pseudo-blog about the openings.
So if everything goes according to plan I should have a full sensory report for you by the end of next week. Stay tuned for details.
On several occasions I have come across this candy, called "Surreals." They tend to turn up as a single bag on the shelf in less-traveled Miami drugstores, and I always buy them, because they are odd, but quite tasty. (They are kind of like a round Kit-Kat. with chocolate and wafers mixed in together.)
So I decide to look them up, and of course they are from a Brazilian company, Garoto. I guess they don't have much US market penetration, since their website is only available in Portuguese. But thanks to the miracle of Google I can read the site in a strange, surreal translation.
"Surreal Peanut. It tries this newness!"
This quote is from a friend whose girlfriend just moved out: "Man, everywhere I look in the house I see her shit. Here's the glass of water she was drinking when we had 'the talk,' still sitting on the counter. This place is like fucking Pompeii."