Friday, March 14, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Whoah! That's Deep
Awhile ago, the NYTimes online had a piece about all the crazy critters we're discovering in the middle and deep ocean. It prompted me to get The Deep by Claire Nouvian which is a total mindbender of a coffee table book full of pictures you'd swear were aliens.
I just watched this TED talk with some cool video footage of octopus camouflage. If you watch nothing else, check out the final 30 seconds...
This has all got me wondering how much the web has come to approximate the known ocean. There's a ton of churn in the surface web. Things are always turning over and getting kicked/digged to the surface. But there's so much more that exists well below in the far and unknown reaches of the land.
WebScout of LA Times points out that nobody can possibly be watching all the shit getting posted on YouTube. It's fun as hell to watch the videos nobody else has seen.
For example, as an amateur Jacques Cousteau, I choose a character at random in an alphabet I don't know, for example: を Then I sort the resulting videos by date and I get to see something nobody else has seen. In this case, I was the very first person to view a video of a guy flying a parachute with a snowblower engine...
I just feel so special for being the first person to see something, ya know? It's like the solitary and special feeling of seeing a weird and wonderful creature in The Deep. You don't know at all what to expect and you're kind of prepared for anything... that appears as a streaming video in a 3"x5" box.
I just watched this TED talk with some cool video footage of octopus camouflage. If you watch nothing else, check out the final 30 seconds...
This has all got me wondering how much the web has come to approximate the known ocean. There's a ton of churn in the surface web. Things are always turning over and getting kicked/digged to the surface. But there's so much more that exists well below in the far and unknown reaches of the land.
WebScout of LA Times points out that nobody can possibly be watching all the shit getting posted on YouTube. It's fun as hell to watch the videos nobody else has seen.
For example, as an amateur Jacques Cousteau, I choose a character at random in an alphabet I don't know, for example: を Then I sort the resulting videos by date and I get to see something nobody else has seen. In this case, I was the very first person to view a video of a guy flying a parachute with a snowblower engine...
I just feel so special for being the first person to see something, ya know? It's like the solitary and special feeling of seeing a weird and wonderful creature in The Deep. You don't know at all what to expect and you're kind of prepared for anything... that appears as a streaming video in a 3"x5" box.
Friday, March 7, 2008
GuestBlog: And Now For Some Meth Cooking!
Let me just say--Vince Gilligan is a flippin' genius. I've had a screenwriter fetish for him since he wrote my favorite X-Files episodes (possibly my favorite of the 90s) "Home" and "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" which to jog your memory involved an inbred team of brothers that kept their quad-amputee mother under the bed as a sex snack and Alex Trebek as a Man in Black, respectively. That and about thirty other classics.
And really, in some ways Breaking Bad is all Gilligan's rotten small-town cheerfulness wrapped up in his increasingly sophisticated and cinematic lens. In fact, I have to echo the finally (two weeks ago I couldn't find a single one) tons of positive critics when I say: "Holy crap this is AMC? As in re-runs of It's A Wonderful Life AMC of yore?" Yeah not anymore.
And Bryan Cranston is ungodly great in this role, Walter White, the uber-mild mannered high school chemistry teacher that is dealing with his pregnant Ebay-entrepeneur wife, disabled son, and oh yeah, terminal lung cancer with the same blank, beaten facade til somewhere along the line he snaps--and becomes the man he was always meant to me.
Flashbacks in future episodes bear this out, but all you really need to see are the first, brilliant minute of the show, where Cranston in all his glory is kitted out in a gas mask, tighty whitey underwear, tearasses out of a wildly careening RV, and pulls a gun out of his saggy waistband and aims. Here is a guy who really embraces death, and starts doling out his fair share of it too.
Aaron Paul as White's former/future student Jesse Pinkman deserves some serious props too and if there's any justice, there should be casting agents knocking his door down as the new Colin Farrell or whatever. There's a jumpy, agitated vibe that just screams misguided teenager and yet his soaked in despair meth-fiend downward spiral seems as degraded and world-weary as it gets.
The funny thing is? It's at least as much Walter's fault as his. Here the old steer the young into increasingly fucked up scenarios with little regards to the consequences and Jesse, more than likely desperate for a father figure, obliges. Hapless, and hopeless, he suddenly attaches to his mentor like a gosling to a rubber boot. Walt's at his height when he finally realizes that if he has power over chemistry, and over Jesse and the ripe drug market of New Mexico, he just might have power over death.
At least he'll have a stack of green to burn.
So yeah, what I'm saying is watch it, yeah. I'm definitely more partial to this than reading something about the chairs on In Treatment on the NYT. The series finale is coming soon, but I'm just tickled pink that hard drugs, black comedy and white undies have seemed to found themselves a permanent roost on basic cable.
And really, in some ways Breaking Bad is all Gilligan's rotten small-town cheerfulness wrapped up in his increasingly sophisticated and cinematic lens. In fact, I have to echo the finally (two weeks ago I couldn't find a single one) tons of positive critics when I say: "Holy crap this is AMC? As in re-runs of It's A Wonderful Life AMC of yore?" Yeah not anymore.
And Bryan Cranston is ungodly great in this role, Walter White, the uber-mild mannered high school chemistry teacher that is dealing with his pregnant Ebay-entrepeneur wife, disabled son, and oh yeah, terminal lung cancer with the same blank, beaten facade til somewhere along the line he snaps--and becomes the man he was always meant to me.
Flashbacks in future episodes bear this out, but all you really need to see are the first, brilliant minute of the show, where Cranston in all his glory is kitted out in a gas mask, tighty whitey underwear, tearasses out of a wildly careening RV, and pulls a gun out of his saggy waistband and aims. Here is a guy who really embraces death, and starts doling out his fair share of it too.
Aaron Paul as White's former/future student Jesse Pinkman deserves some serious props too and if there's any justice, there should be casting agents knocking his door down as the new Colin Farrell or whatever. There's a jumpy, agitated vibe that just screams misguided teenager and yet his soaked in despair meth-fiend downward spiral seems as degraded and world-weary as it gets.
The funny thing is? It's at least as much Walter's fault as his. Here the old steer the young into increasingly fucked up scenarios with little regards to the consequences and Jesse, more than likely desperate for a father figure, obliges. Hapless, and hopeless, he suddenly attaches to his mentor like a gosling to a rubber boot. Walt's at his height when he finally realizes that if he has power over chemistry, and over Jesse and the ripe drug market of New Mexico, he just might have power over death.
At least he'll have a stack of green to burn.
So yeah, what I'm saying is watch it, yeah. I'm definitely more partial to this than reading something about the chairs on In Treatment on the NYT. The series finale is coming soon, but I'm just tickled pink that hard drugs, black comedy and white undies have seemed to found themselves a permanent roost on basic cable.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Beautiful and Entrancing
There's something mesmerizing about this giant puppet girl. You can see all strings attached, but yet it's not hard to make the leap and assume life. In fact, I ended up believing this giant girl must be aware of all the ropes attached to her body.
The tongue is a little creepy though, huh?
.
The tongue is a little creepy though, huh?
.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
heAD Space
Manny: Ever wish you could defragment yer brain?
Plunge: Compact and repair storage
Manny: Unload bad sector
Plunge: Delete unwanted memories of commercials
Manny: Purge commercial memories
Plunge: Or I guess I could charge for that brain space. Like a banner or a billboard.
Manny: Sounds like a sweet business model when WE charge THEM to post ads in our minds.
Plunge: I best get paid for remembering some shit like Honeycombs commercials from Saturday morning cartoons in the 80's.
Manny: I’ll issue cease and desist letters if they don’t payfrit
Plunge: “Dear Sirs, We're going to stop remembering your shitty commercials… this is a takedown notice. I heretofore refuse to acknowledge that I know who Tony the Tiger is.
Manny: And I sure as shit won't use constructions like "Got Milk?"
Plunge: I didn't like saying "got x" anyway. Now if someone asks, “Got herpes?”
I be like “I'm sorry I don't know what you mean by that”
Plunge: Got ‘Got Milk’?
Manny: Oh yes - we used to carry that catch phrase - but we discontinued memory of that last year.
Plunge: Compact and repair storage
Manny: Unload bad sector
Plunge: Delete unwanted memories of commercials
Manny: Purge commercial memories
Plunge: Or I guess I could charge for that brain space. Like a banner or a billboard.
Manny: Sounds like a sweet business model when WE charge THEM to post ads in our minds.
Plunge: I best get paid for remembering some shit like Honeycombs commercials from Saturday morning cartoons in the 80's.
Manny: I’ll issue cease and desist letters if they don’t payfrit
Plunge: “Dear Sirs, We're going to stop remembering your shitty commercials… this is a takedown notice. I heretofore refuse to acknowledge that I know who Tony the Tiger is.
Manny: And I sure as shit won't use constructions like "Got Milk?"
Plunge: I didn't like saying "got x" anyway. Now if someone asks, “Got herpes?”
I be like “I'm sorry I don't know what you mean by that”
Plunge: Got ‘Got Milk’?
Manny: Oh yes - we used to carry that catch phrase - but we discontinued memory of that last year.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Micro rage
There are buttons on my microwave for everything except the shit I want to do. There's one that says 'chicken dinner plate' and then 'reheat pizza.' The 'popcorn' button is ubiquitous. The easy-on button makes it easy to only get 30 second increments. I actually puzzled for a long time before figuring out how to get my cheese-crackers to the right level of meltiness without standing in front of the door absorbing radiation waiting to snatch it out.
Clearly 30 seconds is way too long for a little cheese over Triscuits. That's my favored munchie food at the moment. Using the flavored Triscuits is unbelievably delicious with a little slice of cheddar... Mmmm... My favorite flavor is rosemary/olive oil. They're pretty tasty plain too.
The issue is that for a plate of crackers, the optimal moment of melt comes around 12 to 15 seconds. If I hit 'easy on' I have to watch it and stop it around 18 or so. But that requires me to do math and to avoid being distracted for a full quarter-minute!
My attention span is not that reliable. This is what I want my new microwave to look like...
Clearly 30 seconds is way too long for a little cheese over Triscuits. That's my favored munchie food at the moment. Using the flavored Triscuits is unbelievably delicious with a little slice of cheddar... Mmmm... My favorite flavor is rosemary/olive oil. They're pretty tasty plain too.
The issue is that for a plate of crackers, the optimal moment of melt comes around 12 to 15 seconds. If I hit 'easy on' I have to watch it and stop it around 18 or so. But that requires me to do math and to avoid being distracted for a full quarter-minute!
My attention span is not that reliable. This is what I want my new microwave to look like...
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Breaking Badass in the tumble-Weeds
Breaking Bad is oh so good.
It has really satisfying episode chunks. Within each, it manages to fuck with your expectations. It also leads you forward (make no mistake, you'll want more) but without obviously annoying cliffhangers. The first two episodes are available on online at AMC. After that, if you don't have cable, it's torrent time.
Basically the plot theme is Weeds, but in every way jitterier, edgier, more hopped up... Somehow, it's also got me remembering a bit of high school chem. In that vein, here's a way to think about it in an SAT analogy kind of way...
Weeds is to Breaking bad as...
(or to use the annoying symbols)
Weeds : Breaking bad ::
Marijuana : Meth
Suburban mom : HS chem teacher
Agrestic : Albequerque
Hippies : Crank whores
Secret husband DEA agent: Brother-in-law DEA agent
Grow house in Agrestic : Winnebago in the desert
Son who's a nerd : Son with cerebral palsy
.
It has really satisfying episode chunks. Within each, it manages to fuck with your expectations. It also leads you forward (make no mistake, you'll want more) but without obviously annoying cliffhangers. The first two episodes are available on online at AMC. After that, if you don't have cable, it's torrent time.
Basically the plot theme is Weeds, but in every way jitterier, edgier, more hopped up... Somehow, it's also got me remembering a bit of high school chem. In that vein, here's a way to think about it in an SAT analogy kind of way...
Weeds is to Breaking bad as...
(or to use the annoying symbols)
Weeds : Breaking bad ::
Marijuana : Meth
Suburban mom : HS chem teacher
Agrestic : Albequerque
Hippies : Crank whores
Secret husband DEA agent: Brother-in-law DEA agent
Grow house in Agrestic : Winnebago in the desert
Son who's a nerd : Son with cerebral palsy
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
