In the beginning...

In the beginning there was nothing, not even time
No planet, no stars, no hip-hop, no rhyme
Then there was a bang like the sound of my gat
The universe was born and the shit was phat
    - "The Big Bizang" by MC Hawking

The Bible is rubbish. It makes some excellent points and certain parts may have actual historical backing, but by and large it's a highly contradictory work written and edited by several committees. Even the Pope has finally admitted that much of it, especially the Old Testament stuff, is allegory and not literal truth.

So I'm going to start with the Creation and try to apply the six 24 hour period model to a history with a bit more backing.

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: 2 Cor. 4.6 and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

13.7 billion years ago, as we measure time, there was nothing. Nothing except the singularity. Contained in the singularity was the whole universe smashed into an area smaller than a pixel on this screen. Contrary to popular belief, even if there was air to carry the sound and someone to hear the sound, the sound it made was probably not a bang, not even a big one. But you can be sure that it would have been really loud.

9.2 billion years later one of the swirling clouds of debris from The Loud Noise collected into a very hot and radioactive lump that we call Earth. Over the next half billion years the planet cooled, rains came, oceans formed, and simple self-replicating nucleic acids began to form along vents in the ocean floor. The nucleic acids became cellular life. It took another billion years for these cells to develop photosynthesis so they could also get fuel from the sun. Another billion years and the cells were becoming complex enough to form something that we might start to recognize as algae. Yet another billion and the first multicellular life appeared as plants. Four hundred million years and the first animals appeared. One hundred thirty million years and the first arthropods appeared. Then more complex animals and fish.

Then 488 million years ago darkness fell upon the Earth. The ice came, the seas dried, and death took the plants and animals in great numbers. Thus endeth the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

I'll grant you that I stuck the Biblical first and second day into one day. Just wait.

On the second day the life spread and changed, becoming more diverse and complex. Reefs were formed, sharks patrolled the seas. Plants moved onto the land as moss and lichen and fern.

Then 444 million years ago darkness fell upon the Earth. The ice came, the seas dried, and death took the plants and animals in great numbers. Thus endeth the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

On the third day the life spread and changed, becoming more diverse and complex. Plants became grasses and began to bear seed.

Then 360 million years ago darkness fell upon the Earth. The ice came, the seas dried, and death took the plants and animals in great numbers. Thus endeth the third day.

See? Grass on the third day!

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Here we diverge again.

On the fourth day the life spread and changed, becoming more diverse and complex. Life began to crawl from the sea. For short periods at first but longer with each generation. Slowly they moved farther and farther from the seas. Amphibians and reptiles and things that were almost but not quite mammals walked the Earth.

Then 250 million years ago darkness fell upon the Earth. The ice came, the seas dried, and death took the plants and animals in great numbers. Thus endeth the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

On the fifth day the life spread and changed, becoming more diverse and complex. Reptiles grew to enormous size while tiny mammals hid between their toes. Things that were almost but not quite birds grew things that were almost but not quite feathers.

Then 65 million years ago darkness fell upon the Earth. The ice came, the seas dried, and death took the plants and animals in great numbers. Thus endeth the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, 1 Cor. 11.7 after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

On the sixth day the life spread and changed, becoming more diverse and complex. Mammals became dominant on the land. One hundred thousand years ago the first humans appeared. Sixty thousand years ago the common father to all modern humans lived.

Then came cars and industry, chemical waste and wars. The ice came, dried the seas, and death took the plants and animals in great numbers. Thus endeth the sixth day.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

On the seventh day God rested for there was nobody left to watch over.


There were five major extinction events (and one lesser event) in Earth history. I'm going to say that each of these would be a dark period, or night, for life on Earth. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, and we're bringing Saturday night.

p.s. I know this is poorly written. It's just for my blog. Someday I'll flesh this out a more and try to make it not rubbish.

The Tin Man

Few know of what happened after the events of the "Wizard of Oz". Sure, Dorothy got to go home, but she never knew of the ruin that followed her visit.

Shortly after getting his heart Tin Man got his first crush. As Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man worked their way back along Yellow Brick Road they found a young woman out working in a field. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a rough knot, her soft round features covered in tear streaked dirt, her plain dress stained and torn and outgrown a year or so back. His companions went on but Tin Man's heart caused him to empathize with the sad farm girl. He stopped to see if he could help.
She told him of her lazy father who whipped her and made her tend the fields so he could sit at home drinking. Tin Man decided to help this lovely dirt covered damsel in distress. He set to work next to her to help finish the fields faster. His fingers became a blur of motion, his powerful pistons and motors ripping up the stubborn turnips and tossing them casually into a pile on the basket sitting at the end of the row.
Having finished that the woman took Tin Man back to the house. She washed her face and brushed out her hair and set Tin Man to work milking the cattle. A smile and a little flash of leg and she set the Tin Man reshoeing the horses. The horses tried to warn Tin Man about the woman but he wouldn't believe a word against her.
When done with the horses he made her a colorful new dress which she wore when she ran away with a handsome young man from Emerald City leaving left Tin Man behind.
Tin Man continued doing chores around the farm waiting for the woman to come back until her father came out and mocked him for letting her play him for such a fool. The father mocked and mocked until Tin Man finally understood that the pretty girl had just used him to do her work and wasn't coming back for him ever.
Tin Man, his head bowed and his shouldered sagging, shuffled his way back to The Yellow Brick Road. He crept along the road for weeks, looking neither left nor right, his eyes focussed on a point a foot in front and two feet below his toes. Finally he returned to the woods where Dorothy had first found him. He tried cutting down a tree but couldn't find the strength to do more than put a knick in the bark.

Tin Man couldn't find the motivation to do anything else. His heart was broken, he'd returned to the closest place to a home he knew, even his primary function of cutting trees seemed pointless. His owner had left him rusting for so many years before Dorothy found him that it was clear they didn't even want him or care if he cut down any trees. Tin Man dropped his ax, let his knees give way, and slumped to the ground. There he sat, staring a hundred yards past the roots of an ancient oak. The rains came to do his crying for him and still he sat. Mushrooms grew around him, fires passed, and still he sat. If his joints are rusted even he doesn't know since he doesn't even bother to try them. He just sits there, year after year, with the heart of a human and the absolute, unfading memory of an android.

Game Review: Ratchet and Clank

This is a game about an insane asylum in Nazi Germany and the love affair between the cruel head nurse, Nurse Ratchet, and the imbecilic head of the asylum, Colonel Clank.

Ok, it's not but that could be fun, too.

Instead an evil corporation is building the ideal planet by stealing parts from other planets. Of course, the population of those planets has to die for this to work.
You're a talking fox thing and his robot sidekick/ignition system. Together you set off to win the big hoverboard race and become famous. And if you save the universe in the meantime so be it.

The game goes on much longer than it needs to. That's not a complaint. One judge of the quality of a game is the cost/hours ratio. Ideally a game should take $1 per hour to complete. This meets that qualification nicely.

As the game progresses you get a bunch of cool weapons and gadgets. Continual upgrades is also a good thing. One of the early weapons is the "Glove of DOOOOOOM!" which releases a pack of evilly cackling droids that chase down people who aren't you and blow them up. I think more games need that. Yes, they need robots that do your bidding instead of putting your character at risk, but what I really want is more excuses to say "DOOOOOOM!"

You're given a certain amount of freedom to move around. More than games like "Doom 3" which are in 3-D but still have you stuck on a pretty set path, but not as much as "Grand Theft Auto" which gives you a whole city. About like most games these days. Sometimes going back to places you've already been is a good thing.

It's a run around and shoot things game. Pretty good for that genre. I'm more into puzzle games though. I may get the sequel when I see it for under $20.

Enough of this

I'm so ready to retire. I know, Aren't we all? Just wanna give up on the whole 7 til 3 thing. But I've got another 30 years to go before I reach that point. That's just it. There's no break in this tedium for another 30 years. I like my job well enough. I could do a lot worse and I have. If I have to work it might as well be here. But I'd rather not even be here.

Remember school? Grade school, high school, college? We could struggle through semester after semester largely because we always knew that the semester would end. There was hope. Not sometime in the distant future, either. The semester would end sometime in a time period we could visualize. We'd get several weeks off around year end and a few months off in the summer. It was something to look forward to. It was a point where all the work and projects would end. Pass or fail it would be over. Sure you'd have to jump back in soon, but you'd get time to recover and then there'd be something new. Same coworkers but a new boss with different work.

We don't get that anymore. Sure, we take the occasional week off for vacation but it's not nearly the same. We go back in to the same people and the same projects. There's no end in sight except for the oh so distant promise of retirement once you live the span of your life over again except with mortgage payments this time.

What do we have to look forward to now? Unemployment.

When my friends get fired or quit their jobs we congratulate them. They finally have some real time off. Weeks or more likely months where they finally get to do all those things they've been wanting to do. They can catch up on their reading, learn a new programming language, work on that script they've had rattling around in their head. The constant beat down of work lifts long enough to give you the energy to do that thing you've been wanting to do. Sure, there's that job hunt stuff, too, but that's only a minor part in their new life and when they get that job it still won't be that old job.

You know it's been five and a half years since I've been unemployed? Think of that. Think of a semester of school that lasts 286 weeks instead of 18.
Some time it'll end and I'll get that break. Then I'll take three months off and land another job. I could quit and do it now but it's a safe bet that the new workplace would be worse and the pay would be less. I really do have it good here. I just need a sabbatical. Being stuck at home with a cold doesn't count.

Zooperman!

So there's this girl that I've seen a couple of times. Relax. We're still working out what's going on with us. We went out to Dave and Busters a couple weeks ago and burned through a few of those free cards full of credits that you get with certain meals. Together we built up 432 tickets from various machines. Skee-Ball should really pay out more than it does. We blew 425 of those tickets on a Superman doll.


Here's the doll out doing the flat Stanley thing at the tidal basin with her and her mother.

Movie Review: The Reaping

I only kinda wanted to see this movie. It's an old story. Some bad ju-ju going on in some backwater town where you can hear the drumbeat of bibles being thumped all around. A priest whose faith has failed her is called in to disprove the supernatural nature of the happenings. One Biblical plague after another hits the town and they're ready to lynch some little girl over it. But the science fails and by plague 6 or 7 the ex-priest is convinced and is ready to kill the girl, too. Then there's a twist that almost makes the worn out old story so far worth it. Special effects spectacular. Another little twist. Roll credits.

It wasn't scary, I paid too much to see it and will not get it on DVD.

Movie Review: GrindHouse

A grindhouse, as I understand it, used to be a theatre where you'd go to see a double feature of rather cheaply made movies full of excessive violence, gore, and sex. They'd use whatever film they could find as cheaply as possible, some lame makeup, and dreadful dialog.
This movie is supposed to be a spoof on those movies. No, spoof is the wrong word. Comically intended homage, maybe?

The movie opens with a trailer for a made up movie called "Machete" about a bad ass Mexican hired to kill a senator and then get taken out so he couldn't talk. Instead he loads up on machetes and goes after the senator and the guys who hired him.
There's several real movies like this, but "Machete" is supposed to be low budget-high gore instead of high budget-medium gore.

Then we get into "Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror". A back street deal between some scientists and the military goes wrong and a deadly gas is released that causes horrible blisters and deformities while turning people into mindless cannibal zombies. The film is horribly scratched and melting in places. The color quality changes from scene to scene. A missing reel means we lose the best part of a sex scene the story jumps from the safety of the BBQ hut into the middle of a zombie raid. The dialog is written to mock the bad dialog from the real movies. The gore isn't as bad as in movies like "Dead Alive" where you spend the first 10 minutes choking back the gag reflex but it's pretty bad.
If you've seen the trailers then you already know about the go-go dancer who gets some military grade hardware as a replacement for the leg that gets devoured by zombies. Really, that line tells you everything you need about this movie.
It has Tom Savini as a police officer. That either means something to you or I can't explain it.

There's an intermission where some more fake trailers are shown. One by Rob Zombie ("musician" and writer/director of the gorefest "House of 1000 Corpses"), one by Eli Roth (writer/director/producer/actor of the gorefest "Hostel"), and one by Edgar Wright (writer of the comedy "Shaun of the Dead"). There's also an ad for the restaurant next door showing some rather unappetizing food.

Then we see "Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof". This isn't as gruesome as the first movie. It starts with a long stretch of Tarantino style banter between three girls heading out for a night on the town. We meet Stuntman Mike who explains what a "death proof" car is and why a stuntman needs these specially rigged cars. Then driving and death.
For the next part of this movie we see four more girls out for a good time. One of these actresses is primarily a stuntwoman and is here for a good reason. These girls are in town for a movie they're filming and have a few days off. After much more Tarantino dialog they find a car for sale which is a replica of one in their favorite car film. They take it for a test run so they can do some really stupid stuff with it. No, I can't tell you what. Stuntman Mike shows up again and there's a long car chase that is a lot more dangerous than the dangerous stuff they already had in mind.
After surviving Stuntman Mike these girls decide to turn the tables. They go back after him and the movie ends on a "girl power" note.

This movie must be watched with a whole bunch of people. The Easter sunday crowd was about right. Big theatre with a couple of dozen people well spaced out. It's really a theatre experience movie but I'll probably get it on DVD anyway. Eh... maybe not. Really, you need a mob of people.

Movie Review: Meet The Robinsons

I had doubts about this movie. From the trailers it seemed like the best part of the movie was a partially intelligent dinosaur complaining that it's arms were too small. Plus it was from Disney which hasn't done a good cartoon since "Aladdin". But then I remembered that Pixar just took over Disney. The first thing John Lasseter did was kill "Toy Story 3: Straight to DVD". Suddenly Disney has standards. So I went.

It starts with an old Mickey Mouse cartoon, which tells me that Lasseter had his hands in this movie even if only at the end. Pixar likes having short cartoons before their movies.

"Meet The Robinsons" is a brilliantly strange movie. Instead of cobbling together something to fill 90 minutes of animation time with pop culture references, celebrity voices, and action scenes set to remakes of once popular songs they found a good book and made it a cartoon. The jokes are well timed and fast paced and actually pretty funny.
The story is about a orphan (it's still Disney. Living mothers aren't permitted.) who is also a brilliant if unsuccessful inventor. A boy from the future shows up to tell him to beware a man in a bowler hat who wants to sabotage the science fair. To prove he's from the future the boy has to take our hero to his own time where they crash the time machine. Our hero tries to fix the time machine until he meets the boy's family who instantly treat him like one of their own. Having found the family he's always wanted he doesn't want to go home. This leads to a variation on the standard time traveler Grandfather Paradox.
The man in the bowler hat turns out to be an idiot in cohorts with a robotic bowler that is much more intelligent than the man.

I can't tell you much more than than other than the hero learns that failure is ok as long as he keeps trying, goes home, wins the science fair, and gets adopted.

It was a great movie but I doubt I'll get it on DVD.

Easter

Sorry I've not posted recently. I was down with the ick.

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I would be remiss in my duties as head of the Church of Dougintology if I didn't take a swing at Easter. As usual Easter is one of those holidays that the Christians corrupted for their own uses.
The spelling varies depending on who you ask. Most common is Eastre, meaning spring, but I've also seen Eostre, Estre, Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos. All are names for the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Eastre was a week long fertility festival to encourage the crops to grow, celebrate getting out of that cramped house after a long winter, and to see which of the neighbors survived the harsh winter.

The holiday was associated with the Spring Equinox (when day and night are both 12 hours long). As with most holidays associated with the placement of the sun they weren't alone in their celebrations. People also had festivals for Aphrodite from ancient Cyprus, Ashtoreth from ancient Israel, Astarté from ancient Greece, Demeter from Mycenae, Hathor from ancient Egypt, Ishtar from Assyria, Kali from India, and Ostara a Norse Goddess of fertility.

Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period 22 Mar to 25 Mar. Cybele's main cult was housed on Vatican Hill.
Many religious historians believe that the death and rebirth of Jesus was lifted from Attis to help convert pagans. Others claim that it was lifted from Hindu's Krishna or any one of dozens of other saviors and dieties that came before Jesus.
The position of the Christian Church was that Satan knew Jesus would come so he spent centuries scattering the story among other culture to throw doubt on the story of Jesus.

The eggs and the bunnies are, of course, symbols of birth and fertility that came with the adoption of Eastre. The cross is Christian addition. Alas, one tradition that was lost was building a fire on top of a mountain using new fire made from friction. I'm not much of a tradition guy, partially because I'd be the guy told to stand quietly on top of a cold mountain and watch them try to get a fire started, but I kind of like this tradition. Easter mountain, in Osterberg, was named for this ritual but any mountain will do.

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I'm rather partial to the idea that Jesus is an adaptation of Krishna. Many of the events in Jesus' life parallel Krishna's as do many of his philosophies. Some Hindus accept Jesus as one of the many reincarnations of Vishnu. Some Christians believe that during the missing years of Jesus' life (from childhood until age thirty) were spent traveling including spending time in India.

Book Review: A Multitude of Monsters

This is the sequel to "A Malady of Magiks" which I'm pretty sure I reviewed before. You should really read the first book first.
What to say? In the first book a wizard became allergic to magic and he and his apprentice set off to save the world. The first book felt like a collection of short stories that were bound together in a book. This felt less like a collection of short stories and more like a planned book. Many of their travelling companions return for parts of the trip and new ones are introduced. By the end of the book they've reached the city they've spent two books looking for only to find the city missing.
And so on to book three.

Not brilliantly funny but amusing. Certainly more funny than this Kurt Vonnegut book I'm working my way through. If you don't see a review for "Hocus Pocus" in the next few months it's because I decided life is too short for lame books.

sprouts

In a measuring cup I've placed two of the potatoes from last year's crop. One had already started to sprout and that's the one I'm focusing on here.

Day 2 - Most of the growth was in the root.

Day 4 - You can see the shoot has grown a bit, but only because there's a picture.

Day 6 - Now it's starting to show off.

Today is the beginning of day 8. The shoot has grown even more in the last day and a half. The other potato has started to put off root but not where I expected. The one in the pictures I'll probably put in dirt in another week.

Book Review: There Was an Old Woman

This is the third Nursery Crime novel. I haven't read the other two. I expected mother goose characters, but that's another series of mysteries. This is a real world based story with inspiration from the rhyme "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe." This kinda takes all the fun out of figuring out who dunnit. It tells you right in the title of the book. Might as well write a book called 'The Butler Did It".

A young woman goes off for another year of college at an all girls college. The third girl has just disappeared in 7 years or so and everyone is all worked up. I'm rather wondering why since most places would offer up fatted calves for sacrifice to get numbers that low. Anyway, the girl goes off to college against her mother's wishes.
Our main character and her roommate both knew the missing girl and start a group to hunt her down. In their search they keep getting themselves in danger.

I should mention that there's a second killer besides the old woman in the shoe, but I'm not saying who.

It's a decent book if you're into mysteries. I'm not but I read the whole thing so it can't be too bad. Anyone want it? Not really the sort of book that fits in my collection.

Book Review: Un Lon Dun

I just finished reading "Un Lon Dun" by China Mieville. China has won several awards for his adult science-fiction-fantasy works. But I'd never heard of him until My Krodie took me to his book reading a few weeks back. I picked up this, his latest, and one of his older books that sounded interesting. I've read a few chapters in the other one and all of this one. China's usual work is much tougher to read. It's adult fiction and you should be prepared to work a bit for his usual stuff. However, this being designed for young adults he wrote accordingly. This book is on par with one of the later Harry Potter books for reading level and subject matter. It's a darker Alice in Wonderland. My Krodie's daughter got scared at the reading.

China Miéville speaking at Politics and Prose. My Krodie photographer.

It starts like your typical fantasy book. The magical fairy tale land is in danger and only the chosen one can save it. However, our heroes get sent back home early in the story and the chosen one loses all memory of the magical fairy tale land. Her friend, however, finds out something that the people in UnLondon need to know and has to go back. The prophecy is wrong and they still have to stop the threat, but now they're completely off script.

Great book.

p.s. I feel I should mention that the book includes a lot of sketches done by the author that help you picture what some of the strange creatures and objects look like. I'm stealing this for my book.

Movie Review: The Last Mimzy

"The Last Mimzy" is "E.T." retold but with a message.
Two kids find an artifact in the ocean that turns out to be filled with, among other things, a stuffed bunny. The bunny talks to the sister while a piece of electric glass seems to be rewiring the brother to make him smarter. They hide the goods from the adults since adults never understand. People start to notice a change in the kids. Then the government shows up and really screws things up. There's an escape, they take the alien goodies into the wilderness, and send the bunny back home.

Since most storylines have been done before what's important is how they're told. One version of "Lord of the Rings" is an abomination before the gods while another version is praised by everyone but those who can't watch 3 hour movies. Same story, different storyteller. Similarly, this movie is not only similar to "E.T" but the storytelling is on that same level - if a little less scary.

It was a great movie and you should see it, but I don't know if I need to see it again enough to buy it.

Movie Review: TMNT

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - comic book turned cartoon turned movie. It's been 14 years since the last movie and we were well rid of them. But having been given a rest there was time to come up with a decent script.

Like Superman Returns (Superman V or Superman III depending on if you acknowledge Reeve's last two stinkers) this movie acknowledges much of the time that has passed. Their default nemesis, The Shredder, is still dead. His Foot Clan struggles along without a leader or direction. The turtle's are similarly leaderless with Leonardo off in the wilds of South America for training and protecting the villagers from militants. The other turtles are working tech support, kids parties, or off on their own one man vigilante squad.
Enter Patrick Stewart. Yeah, that's right. Suddenly the kiddie movie has some clout.
Captain Picard is a 3,000 year old military commander whose strangely Asian looking armor was on the verge of conquering South America and then the world until his plan to bring a transdimensional army into this world backfired. He was made immortal, his generals turned to stone, and thirteen demons scattered into the world.
Now the stars are about to align just so again to reopen the dimensional rift. Stewart has become the head of an economic instead of military empire. He recruits the Foot Clan and reanimates four of his generals to round up the demons so he can banish them from this world and lift the curse of immortality from himself.

Also involved are April O'Neill, former reporter now artifact hunter, and her beau Casey, human vigilante.

It's really a good story that can probably be appreciated more by us 30-something kids who watched the cartoon than our own offspring. Then again, there was someone my own age behind me whose kid was explaining the backstory to him.
Seriously, I was impressed with how good a job they did on this movie. I'll probably get it on DVD and I'm not a huge Ninja Turtle fan.

Gardening

When I went to get the mortar from HomeDespot I also picked up a couple of blackberry plantings. One I just stuck in one of my huge pots. The other I'm going to wait a few more weeks and plant in the ground along a fence.

My potato barrel (Instructions) has been left open to air out a bit. The potato crop from last summer has started to sprout so I put it in water to allow it to grow a bit more before they go in the barrel.

Last year's crop

Last year's seed potato.

I also got a package of watermelon seeds that require much less space than typical. I churned up some soil and planted them. Two groups in the ground and one in a pot. I may have to replant later.
This is the first year I've used the ground for gardening. I much prefer pots. I think I'm going to need to do a run to the hardware store for more pots.

Another pot is prepared for green beans, but I'm going to wait another month on those.

My prickly pear is doing well. Last summer's experiments in prickly pear cooking went poorly so I'm cutting back the crop to just the one plant and breaking off some of the growth that seems to want to drop off. This is a very hardy variety that looks good all winter long. If you want some just let me know. Otherwise I leave them on the cement to bake.
More on that at http://dougintology.blogspot.com/2006/07/camper-awakens.html

I also started tearing up more grass to allow the succulents in my front yard to spread. When I finally setup a green roof I'll be wanting to use this succulent ground cover as clippings. By then I should have enough to let it cover the roof in one summer and keep the yard looking decent. The hen and chicks I got from Grandma's yard get to go on the roof, too.

Game Review: Rayman-Raving Rabbits

Rayman has had several other games that I've never played. I kept looking at this one on the shelves and taking note, but passing it by. But it got good comments by some of the online cartoons that I read. I trust these guys more than people who get paid to review games.

I'm guessing that the mini-games inside the Rayman games must have been the most popular features. All this is is a bunch of mini games. There are a bunch of two button Dance Dance Revolution type games. A couple of the repeat the pattern games much like Simon when I was a kid. Lots of games where you're locked on a path and have to shoot as you go through. There's racing games and milking games and whack-a-mole games and all sorts of stuff. It's like they took all the online games you got sick of after 3 plays and put them in a single package so that when you get bored with one they give you another. This game is about packaging. Packaging and the ability to press buttons really fast.

There are a lot worse games that I could have bought, and have in the past. If you're looking for something to buy for your kids that isn't bloody or violent this is a good one. It's for when your kids move past the Lego Star Wars games.

Two and a half months later...

Dad is a farmer. Ok, he's a pipe fitter who farms on the side. But during the cold months he needs something else to do so he makes stained glass windows.
For Christmas of 2005 I asked him to make some house numbers for me. He made this lovely window but since I was still using airplanes for transport he had to mail it to me. Even so, it showed up cracked. Then some stupidity on my part left it where a gust of wind could knock it down and do additional breakings.
So for Christmas of 2006 he made me a replacement for the main body of the window. I'd driven back to Kansas so I had a vehicle to move it back with. Yesterday was warm enough AND I was thinking about it so I scraped the old numbers off the glass and put Dad's numbers up in it's place. You can see it below.

Bill Plympton

National Geographic Live had animator Bill Plympton showing off his environmental work last night. Tickets were $18 but My Krodie's wife got us discounted tickets for $5. Good thing, too. It wasn't an $18 show by any stretch of the imagination. It was good, but not $18 good.

You've seen Bill Plympton's work before even if you don't know the name. Here's one of his more popular clips. Fragments were shown on MTV for years in anti-smoking campaigns.

25 Ways to Quit Smoking


Help justify people posting illegal copies of his cartoons online by purchasing his overpriced stuff at http://www.plymptoons.com/merchandise/newmerch.html.

DC Environmental Film Fest

Thursday marked the beginning of the DC Environmental Film Fest.

Saturday night I went to the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop to see the 1939 production of "Stanley and Livingstone" as in "Doctor Livingstone, I presume." It's the story of how newspaper reporter Henry Stanley went searching Africa for David Livingstone, long thought either dead or lost. Dr. Livingstone had settled in a village and was working as doctor, missionary, and explorer/cartographer. After spending some time there Stanley went back to tell his story and submit Livingstone's maps of the previously unexplored areas. At first nobody believed Stanley until Livingstone died and his last letter mentioned Stanley. I'm told that the end of the movie, where Stanley goes back to continue Livingstone's work, never happened.

Sunday I went to the National Museum of Natural History to see some of the best films from some film fest out west. Only the first three interested me.
"A Life Among Whales" was basically the biography of some marine biologist who is best known for his work with whales. It was also a history of whaling and the impact of whaling on the food chain.
"The Queen of Trees" is a documentary about the African fig tree and all of the life that depends on that tree. It focuses primarily on an itty bitty wasp that fertilizes the tree but it also talks about the parasites that feed on the wasps, the birds that live in the tree, the monkeys and deer that feed on the fruit, the insects that drink the syrup, the bees that feed on what the other insect spill, the butterflys that drink the fermented fruit juice, the fish, the crocodiles, giraffes, elephants, etc. etc. etc.
Then there was "The Craftsman (Mujaan)" about people in Mongolia and one guy in particular who is building a house using only a saw, a drill, and an axe. It starts with him buying the axe in exchange for a sheep. He cuts down trees and builds a cart. He uses the cart to haul materials to where he builds the house. Then he breaks down the house, loads it on the cart, and takes it to the guy who commissioned it. It's cool, but I don't see how they can stay even remotely warm in that house.

Tonight I'm going to watch cartoons at the National Geographic.

Check out the listings to see what else is showing in the next week.

May 7th

I'm just copying off of other bloggers here. If you go to Wikipedia and enter a date it lists all the significant things that happen on that day in history. Most people use their birthday.

Here's mine.

Events

* 558 - In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses. Justinian I immediately orders the dome rebuilt.
* 1274 - In France, the Second Council of Lyons opens to regulate the election of the Pope.
* 1429 - Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orléans, pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning wounded to lead the final charge. The victory marks a turning point in the Hundred Years' War.
* 1697 - Stockholm's royal castle (dating back to medieval times) is destroyed in a huge fire (in the 18th century, it is replaced with the current Royal Palace).
* 1763 - Indian Wars: Pontiac's Rebellion begins - Chief Pontiac begins the "Conspiracy of Pontiac" by attacking British forces at Fort Detroit.
* 1824 - World premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. Work was conducted by Michael Umlauf, under the deaf composer's supervision.
* 1832 - Greece is recognised independent by the Treaty of London. Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria is chosen King.
* 1836 - The settlement of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico is elevated to the royal status of villa by the government of Spain.
* 1840 - The Great Natchez Tornado strikes Natchez, Mississippi, killing 317 people. It is the second deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
* 1847 - In Philadelphia, the American Medical Association (AMA) is founded.
* 1864 - American Civil War: The Army of the Potomac, under General Ulysses S. Grant, breaks off from the Battle of the Wilderness and moves southwards.
* 1895 - In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention - the first in the world radio receiver. In the former Soviet Union this day is celebrated as Day of Radio.
* 1915 - World War I: a German submarine U-20 sinks the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turned many formerly pro-Germans in the United States of America against the German Empire.
* 1920 - Kiev Offensive (1920): Polish troops led by Józef Piłsudski and Edward Rydz-Śmigły and assisted by a symbolic Ukrainian force captured Kiev only to be driven out by the Red Army counter-offensive a month later.
* 1920 - Treaty of Moscow (1920): Soviet Russia recognizes independence of the Democratic Republic of Georgia only to invade the country six months later.
* 1927 - Angelos Sikelianos organizes the first Delphic Festival in Delphi to celebrate the ancient Greek Delphic ideal.
* 1937 - Spanish Civil War: The German Condor Legion, equipped with Heinkel He 51 biplanes, arrive in Spain to assist Franco's forces.
* 1945 - World War II: General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. The document will take effect the next day.
* 1946 - Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with about 20 employees.
* 1947 - Kraft Television Theater debuts, running for the next 11 years.
* 1948 - The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress.
* 1952 - The concept for the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.
* 1954 - Indochina War: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in a French defeat (the battle began on March 13).
* 1960 - Cold War: U-2 Crisis - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
* 1964 - Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, a Fairchild F-27 airliner, crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
* 1974 - West German Chancellor Willy Brandt resigns.
* 1992 - Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution making the 27th Amendment law. This amendment bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise.
* 1992 - Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its maiden voyage (STS-49).
* 1992 - Three employees at a McDonald's Restaurant in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, are brutally murdered and a fourth permanently disabled after a botched robbery. It is the first fast-food murder in Canada.
* 1998 - Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for US$40 billion and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.
* 1999 - Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope that had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054.
* 1999 - A jury finds The Jenny Jones Show and Warner Bros. liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure, after the show purposely deceived Jonathan Schmitz to appear on a secret same-sex crush episode. Schmitz later killed Amedure and the jury awarded Amedure's family US$25 million.
* 1999 - Kosovo War: In Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, three Chinese embassy workers are killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft mistakenly bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
* 1999 - In Guinea-Bissau, President João Bernardo Vieira is ousted in a military coup.
* 2002 - A China Southern Airlines MD-82 plunges into the Yellow Sea, killing 112 people.
* 2005 - Former Lebanese Prime Minister, General Michel Aoun returns to Lebanon after 15 years in exile.
* 2006 - Rolling Stone magazine publishes its 1000th issue.
* 2006 - Arsenal play their last game at Highbury Stadium.

Births

* 1328 - Louis VI the Roman, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1365)
* 1530 - Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, French Huguenot general (d. 1569)
* 1643 - Stephanus Van Cortlandt, American politician (d. 1700)
* 1700 - Gerard van Swieten, Dutch-born physician (d. 1772)
* 1724 - Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser, Austrian general (d. 1797)
* 1740 - Nikolai Arkharov, Russian general (d. 1814)
* 1748 - Olympe de Gouges, playwright and feminist revolutionary (d. 1793)
* 1763 - Józef Antoni Poniatowski, Polish prince (d. 1813)
* 1774 - William Bainbridge, American Commodore
* 1812 - Robert Browning, English poet (d. 1889)
* 1833 - Johannes Brahms, German composer (d. 1897)
* 1840 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer (d. 1893)
* 1847 - Archibald Primrose, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1929)
* 1857 - William A. MacCorkle, American politician (d. 1930)
* 1861 - Rabindranath Tagore, Indian writer, Nobel laureate (d. 1941)
* 1867 - Władysław Reymont, Polish writer, Nobel laureate (d. 1925)
* 1882 - Willem Elsschot, Flemish writer (d. 1960)
* 1885 - George 'Gabby' Hayes, American actor (d. 1969)
* 1891 - Harry McShane, Scottish socialist (d. 1988)
* 1892 - Archibald MacLeish, American Librarian of Congress (d. 1982)
* 1892 - Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia (d. 1980)
* 1896 - Pavel Sergeevich Alexandrov, Russian mathematician (d. 1982)
* 1901 - Gary Cooper, American actor (d. 1961)
* 1909 - Edwin H. Land, American inventor (d. 1991)
* 1911 - Ishiro Honda, Japanese film director (d. 1993)
* 1916 - Huw Wheldon, British broadcaster (d. 1986)
* 1919 - Eva Peron, Argentinian first lady (d. 1952)
* 1922 - Darren McGavin, American actor (d. 2006)
* 1923 - Anne Baxter, American actress (d. 1985)
* 1924 - Albert Band, American film director (d. 2002)
* 1927 - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, German screenwriter
* 1929 - Babe Parilli, American football player
* 1930 - Totie Fields, American comedienne (d. 1978)
* 1931 - Teresa Brewer, American singer
* 1933 - Johnny Unitas, American football player (d. 2002)
* 1933 - Nexhmije Pagarusha, Albanian singer
* 1935 - Isobel Warren, Canadian author
* 1939 - Sidney Altman, Canadian molecular biologist, Nobel laureate
* 1939 - Ruud Lubbers, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
* 1939 - Jimmy Ruffin, American singer
* 1939 - Ruggero Deodato, Italian film director, actor and screen writer
* 1940 - Angela Carter, English novelist and journalist (d. 1992)
* 1943 - Harvey Andrews, English singer and songwriter
* 1945 - Christy Moore, Irish Folk Artist
* 1946 - Thelma Houston, American singer
* 1946 - Bill Kreutzmann, American drummer (Grateful Dead)
* 1950 - Randall 'Tex' Cobb, American boxer and actor
* 1950 - Tim Russert, American television host
* 1954 - Philippe Geluck, Belgian cartoonist
* 1954 - Amy Heckerling, American director
* 1955 - Ben Poquette, American basketball player
* 1955 - Tim Richmond, American race car driver.
* 1955 - Kevin Reed, American theologian
* 1956 - Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
* 1956 - Anne Dudley, British composer
* 1956 - Jean Lapierre, Canadian politician and television host
* 1957 - Ray Fernandez, wrestler (d. 2004)
* 1961 - Phil Campbell, British musician (Motörhead)
* 1965 - Owen Hart, Canadian professional wrestler (d. 1999)
* 1968 - Traci Lords, American actress
* 1969 - Eagle Eye Cherry, Swedish musician
* 1973 - Kristian Lundin, Swedish songwriter
* 1973 - Paolo Savoldelli, Italian cyclist
* 1974 - Breckin Meyer, American actor
* 1974 - Ian Pearce, English footballer
* 1975 - Jason Tunks, Canadian Olympic discus thrower
* 1975 - Nicole Sheridan, American porn star
* 1975 - Zee, American hip hop artist
* 1978 - Brian Clevinger, American author
* 1979 - Katie Douglas, American basketball player
* 1980 - Johan Kenkhuis, Dutch swimmer
* 1984 - Alex Smith, American football player
* 1987 - Asami Konno, Japanese singer (Morning Musume)
* 1987 - Dennis Mak, Chinese singer (Sun Boy'z)

Deaths

* 973 - Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 912)
* 1092 - Remigius de Fécamp, first bishop of Lincoln (b. unknown)
* 1427 - Thomas la Warr, 5th Baron De La Warr, English churchman
* 1523 - Franz von Sickingen, German soldier (b. 1481)
* 1539 - Guru Nanak Dev, Pakistani founder of Sikhism (b. 1469)
* 1539 - Ottaviano Petrucci, Italian printer (b. 1466)
* 1615 - Sanada Yukimura, Japanese samurai (b. 1567)
* 1617 - David Fabricius, German astronomer (b. 1564)
* 1667 - Johann Jakob Froberger, German composer (b. 1616)
* 1682 - Tsar Feodor III of Russia (b. 1661)
* 1718 - Mary of Modena, wife of James II of England (b. 1658)
* 1793 - Pietro Nardini, Italian composer (b. 1722)
* 1800 - Niccola Piccinni, Italian composer (b. 1728)
* 1805 - William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1737)
* 1825 - Antonio Salieri, Italian composer (b. 1750)
* 1840 - Caspar David Friedrich, German painter (b. 1774)
* 1868 - Henry Peter Brougham, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain (b. 1778)
* 1896 - H. H. Holmes, American serial killer (b. 1861)
* 1922 - Max Wagenknecht, German composer (b. 1857)
* 1925 - William Hesketh Lever, First Viscount Leverhulme (b. 1851)
* 1940 - George Lansbury, Labour Party Leader (b. 1859)
* 1941 - Sir James George Frazer, Scottish anthropologist (b. 1854)
* 1942 - Felix Weingartner, Yugoslavian conductor (b. 1863)
* 1951 - Warner Baxter, American actor (b. 1889)
* 1998 - Allan McLeod Cormack, South African physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1924)
* 1998 - Eddie Rabbitt, American musician (b. 1941)
* 2000 - Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., American actor (b. 1909)
* 2002 - Seattle Slew, American Race-Horse (b. 1974)
* 2004 - Waldemar Milewicz, Polish reporter (b. 1956)
* 2005 - Tristan Egolf, American writer (b. 1971)
* 2005 - Otilino Tenorio, Ecuadorian football (soccer) player (b. 1980)
* 2006 - Richard Carleton, Australian news reporter (b.1943)
* 2006 - Lillian Gertrud Asplund, RMS Titanic survivor (b. 1907)
* 2006 - Joan C. Edwards, American philanthropist (b. 1918)
* 2006 - Machiko Soga, Japanese actress, singer, and tokusatsu legend (b. 1943)

Holidays and observances

* Russia - Radio Day (commemorating the work of Alexander Popov)
* Bulgaria - Radio and Television Day (see above)
* USA - National Masturbation Day (Declared by Good Vibrations (sex toy business)) Now in its 11th year - [1][2][3][4][5] commonly celebrated with Masturbate-a-thons

Liturgcal feasts

* Acacius of Byzantium
* Saint Domitian of Huy, the apostle of the Meuse valley
* Saint Flavia Domitilla
* Blessed Gisela (d. 1060)

archaologists find brick

I missed Pi day yesterday (3.14) but I didn't miss the Ides of March. Remember, kids, togas are great places to hide knives.

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This is the wall in my computer room as of Tuesday night. I've started to expand into the chimney. The weather is warm enough to toss the debris out the second story door.

Movie Review: The Namesake

This is not a movie I would normally have gone to. There's no space ships, no explosions, no schemes or twists, none of what I usually go see a movie for. But there WERE free tickets and a girl whose schedule I'd been trying to get on.

"The Namesake" is based on the book by the same name. Yeah, I hadn't heard of the book either.
I got a different impression of the movie from the trailer than what was shown. From the trailer I expected the movie to start with a late teen, American born Indian (dot, not feather) who was moody and sullen, hated India and his name and wanted to change his name. Then the father would start some long flashback scene telling about why he gave his son that name. There'd be a Lifetime Channel moment and the son would embrace his name and say to hell with what the Americans thought.

What really happened was similar to that. The movie starts in 1974ish as the father is riding on a train and reading Nicholai Gogol. The train crashes and he moves to America and two years later he marries and Indian woman that his family hooked him up with. Yeah, it really moves about that fast. They have a kid and name him Gogol when the hospital tells them they can't take the kid home without a name. In India they might take years to give him a real name.
The kid starts school at the age of 4 and decides he prefers the name Gogol to the one that his family tried to change it to. But when going off to college he decides he needs a less weird name and changes it to Nicholai. He meets some Barbie doll and spends all his time with her and her family ignoring his own. This continues until his father dies and he starts to reconnect with his Indian heritage. We assume he's broken up with Barbie since she never appears again and he marries some Indian girl. Eventually the Indian girl cheats on him and they divorce. Thus endeth the movie.
They do explain why the father named his son Gogol. The son knew that Gogol was his dad's favorite author but when his father elaborates it still comes off as "I was reading that author when I was the sole survivor of a train wreck." I have to assume that in the book it makes more sense. Probably using the train wreck as a rebirth moment. It probably would have made more sense if he'd named the son after the guy on the train who kept telling him to travel and see the world.

It helps if you see the movie with a bunch of Indians (dot) like we did. Their reactions help punctuate a few scenes since they'll get cultural humor that might slip past American audiences.

It was nice to see Kal Penn in a serious movie role instead of "Van Wilder" or "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" level of films.

Good movie, but I'm not getting it on DVD. It's just not my thing.

p.s. While looking up the spelling of "Nicholai" I found that I have one of Nicholai Gogol's books on my to-read shelf. Some day I'll get around to reading "Dead Souls". With a title like that how could I not pick it up?

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I've made enough progress on the office wall that I decided to use the nice weather on Sunday to go get some mortar. I was expecting a bag of Type S mortar to weigh 50 lbs or so. Turns out it weighs 80. If it were only 50lbs my cart might have survived. Yes, that's right. I took my puny wire grocery/laundry cart to go pick up mortar. If it had worked then I'd have no worries about how to go get the rest. As it is...

I set the bag in the cart and the bottom saged a bit. No problem. I might have to push it back into shape later, but so far it looks good. I push the cart to the checkout, pay, and head out across the parking lot toward the subway station.
By the time I reached the subway the bulge had continued to grow, the axle had bent, and the wheel on the right was leaning at an angle. Still, if I can make it home I can spend some time with a vice and plyers to put it all back. The next trip I'll be sure to put down some boards on the bottom to help distribute the weight. No worries.
As I transferred from one train to the next the wobble from the wonky wheel became pronounced. The cart wanted to wander back and forth. Wires are starting to pop loose from the back of the cart.
The elevator for the U street Metro is near 13th street while I normally exit near 10th street. It would add 3 blocks to my trip, but I'd really prefer to use the elevator. And I was already close to that end of the station so either way it's a couple of blocks that I'd rather not have to deal with. So up the elevators.
At this point the cart is looking really bad. It's leaning off to the right so that I'm trying to hold up that end of the basket with one hand while the other is on the handle moving it along.
As I walked along I can hear the plastic in the leaning wheel starting to crack. I slow down a bit and that seems to help. Still, I'm out pacing about half the pedestrians. What is so damn hard about putting one foot in front of another that I seem to be only one of maybe a dozen people in this city who can do it?
So, the African American Civil War Memorial, turn, cross street, past the chinese place, across the alley, CRACK! Two and a half blocks from home the wheel gives out completely. I break it off and see how far I can get on one wheel. The answer is three inches.
BUT! The front legs are still intact! So we continue up the street with a lean and a twist, a lean and a twist, a lean and a twist, a lean and a twist. Step by step we move up the sidewalk. Wires are dropping from the basket every few feet. And old woman watches as I diligently struggle on toward home. We talk for a bit and she shuffles on ahead. I continue this for another half block before giving up.
I take the lightweight stuff and hope that the rest is too heavy to steal before I get back. Leaving the two legged mass of twisted metal behind I head home for backup. I pass the old woman and give her an update.
Back home, I drop off the lightweight stuff, grab the Segway, and head back out. The old woman cheers as I tear off in my high speed electric dolly. A man on a bike is watching to see if I came back or if the mortar was his for the taking. I heft the bag out of the twisted metal sculpture that once was a grocery cart and set it in a foot hole on the Segway. I climb on and rest one knee on the bag. I resemble a pirate with a cement leg. I creep on home and unload.

I also got some blueberry plant cuttings. I think. Could be blackberry. I'm pretty sure I decided against the grapes. In a couple of weeks, when the frost risk has finally ended I plan to plant them along the fence between me and one of my neighbors.

Coming soon: "Mortar Follys" and "Gardening in a Postage Stamp".

Movie Review: The Host

"The Host" seems to give the "Shawn of the Dead" treatment to Japanese monster movies. It's just not as funny as "Shawn ..." was.

The movie opens in a US Army morgue in South Korea in 2000. The American doctor has his Korean assistant dump out several hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde (can you believe I spelled that right on the first try?) because the bottles were dusty. The assistant objects since the drain goes into the river, the chemicals are toxic, and there are regulations on the disposal of them, but his boss makes it an order.
Two years later some fishermen see something strange swimming in the river. It's still small enough to fit in a coffeecup.
Then in 2006 we meet a family that owns a food kiosk along the river. Grandpa owns it, his idiot son helps run it, his other son went to college but can't get a job, his daughter is a competitive archer, and his granddaughter (daughter of the idiot son) is still in school. A strange blob is hanging under a bridge and everyone is gathering around to watch it. It drops from the bridge and people stand around and throw things in the water for it to eat. Next thing you know this giant fish/lizard/mutant thing is running around eating people. Finally it takes the granddaughter and swims off. Everyone thinks she's dead until she calls them on her POS cellphone. The rest of the movie is spent from the perspective of the family as they try to track down and save the granddaughter while evading the military.

The humor is dark and often only the knowledge that this is a horror/comedy makes it funny.
The creature looks fantastic. Only when set on fire do the effects look like rubbish. Besides being a giant mutant creature it has several deformities that make it a proper toxic waste mutant instead of just a healthy undiscovered creature. One of it's eyes is surrounded with blisters and seems to have cataracts. It has what appear to be giant fish half embedded head first in it's torso at random places.

It is subtitled except when talking to Americans. That doesn't bother me, but I know some people hate that.

"The Host" is a great movie and I'll almost certainly get it on DVD.

KSR

My Krodie and I went to a book signing for Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book tuesday night. "Sixty Days and Counting" is the third and final book in his global warming trilogy. I said what the book is before (here) so I'll just write about the talk.
He does a decent Q&A session, but the reading itself wasn't anything thrilling. He's just not someone who should do his own audio book. Neil Gaiman is great. Gaiman's last novel is better when he reads it than when reading to yourself. But Kim just doesn't have it.
Sadly enough he refers to this trilogy as his comedy. Clearly he's using a definition of the word "comedy" that I wasn't previously familiar with.

I am looking forward to fighting my way through this book. And you do have to fight the book in much the same way you have to fight the "Lord of the Rings" books. All of his books shift from interesting to drudgery until the last 100 pages or so. Which sections are interesting and which are drudgery vary with the person. He's very thorough with his subject. He's pretty much killed Mars terraforming books for several decades with his Mars Trilogy. There's just nothing else to write about. But those books really drug until the last 100 pages or so.

Movie Review: The Number 23

I planned to post a picture of my wall excavation after one day, but the memory card seems to be having issues. So instead you get a movie review.

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4 8 15 16 23 42
If you've been watching Lost you know these numbers may come to mean something in another three and half seasons. 23 can be explained in about two hours.

This movie exploits what's known at the 23 Enigma.
From Wikipedia: As a number with which to associate things, 23 has several helpful properties. It is a prime number, and therefore more likely to be associated with coincidences because events associated with composite numbers would be divided by a factor to arrive at it or some other prime. In addition, it enjoys the boon of having the two lowest primes as digits; 2 and 3 are small and therefore can be included in complex calculations that arrive at numbers only remotely related, which can then become coincidental with significant events. Two and three are also the most frequent factors (excluding 1) of a given range of whole numbers. 23 less the numeric base is 13, which has many phobias attached to it.

The movie quotes several occurances of the number 23, some of which take quite a bit of math and a leap of imagination to get to. The more obvious include the Earth's tilt at 23.5 degrees (the .5 being 2+3), 23 chromosomes from each human parent, 23 something somethings in Euclid's geometry. There's also a ton of dates and numerology.

The story is that Jim Carrey gets a book where the main character is remarkably similar to him and is haunted by the number 23. It slowly drives him to murder and suicide. As the book progresses Jim Carrey's obsession with the number 23 grows, too. He reads the clues in the book to find the body of some girl murdered when she was 23 and the man in jail for her murder who Carrey thinks wrote the book.
The story is a quest for the author of the book and the secret of the number before the number drives him to madness and murder.

It's not a great movie, it's not a bad movie. The manner they use to get to some of those numbers is more interesting than the movie itself.

Movie Review: The Last King of Scotland

When I first heard about this I had no idea what it was about. Then I saw a review and wondered what Idi Amin had to do with Scotland. I was king of interested because I know so little about Idi Amin, but it was nominated for an Academy Award so that was a turn off. Only the lamest movies win even if a good on actually gets nominated. But I heard enough good reviews that I thought maybe the Academy might have made a mistake. Turns out it's a little from both piles.

This is the story of Idi Amin's personal doctor. A young man from Scotland goes to Uganda to be a village doctor and have a bit of adventure. Amin is taking over as he rides the bus to his village. He goes to see Amin on Amin's tour of Uganda as new President and skipping a few bits of ths story becomes Amin's doctor. He's mostly blind to what's going on in the country. Sure there's a few quirks to Amin but he's not that bad. But eventually he learns about people disappearing and mass slaughters and decides he wants out. There's more to the story, but that's what I wanted to know before going to see it.
Much like "Good Night and Good Luck" shouldn't be viewed as a lesson in McCarthyism this shouldn't be viewed as a lesson in Amin's rule.

Good movie but I don't need to see it again.
You know, I say that a lot. And it IS a good movie. Forest Whitaker does a great job conveying paranoia and a bi-polar personality. I want to know more about Idi Amin. I just want to see it again less than some other movies I say it about.

construction

I started throwing myself at home repairs a bit sooner than I thought I would. I've been keeping the upstairs pretty cold and try not to go up there. But now there's someone who may want to come over eventually. So I came home from work, grabbed the pry bar that Dad gave me for Christmas, and attacked the wall in what used to be my geek room.

Here's the report after one hour.
Starting from the inside of the wall and working out there's brick, a layer of cement, plaster, paint, paint, paint, paint, plaster, and paint. Everything above the cement comes off with some ease. The cement turns to powder with just a bit of encouragement.
I've cleared away about half of what's covering the cement. I planned to provide a picture but the battery is dead in my camera.
A few clumps came out where someone pushed putty between the bricks.
Getting the bricks clean should be no problem.

After two and a half hours.
Dust everywhere and in everything. I came down to let the dust settle from the air as much as anything. Great sections of wall cover just seem to drop off while others hang on for dear life. Still, most of that wall is clear. I can start in on the actual cement covering.
I brought the radio up after that first hour. Think I'll see about bringing home the VCR from the office tomorrow. For now I want to bring the antenna up so I can work during "Prison Break" and "Heroes".
Gandolf stopped chewing her feathers while I worked now that we're back down here she's chewing again. She's bored and doesn't know how to care for her feathers.

After five and a half hours.
It starts getting cold when you're not vigorously chipping away painted plaster. Cement removal is more like archaeology. Slowly removing soft stone a bit at a time. It helps to dig trenches. Cut the huge wall of cement into smaller islands. How well those come away from the wall varies wildly, but it's better than taking it away as dust. I've got a few square feet cleared. If I'd planned this better that wall could look like an artistic version of some blasted Middle East house.
They apparently mixed hair with the cement back then to help it hold together. Probably horse, but could be human. But no hair is a match for my pry bar.

The next morning.
EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE DUST!

Light exhibit at the Hirshorn Museum

There was a really lousy writeup about this exhibit in the Smithsonian Magazine. But the picture was of this one piece that I saw in the basement of the Wichita art museum a long time ago.
Some of the pieces are old stuff repositioned, but there's some new stuff, too.
Early on there's a wheelbarrow made of flourescent lights.
There's a spotlight pointed at a slowly rotating prism ring that is worth a couple of minutes.
Then there's a dark room that's pretty lame.
There's an old piece that is a circle painted in a circular gradient so that the edges are the same color of the shadows it casts on the wall behind it. It's hard to tell when it ends and the wall begins. One of the first bits that I saw the first time I went there and one of my favorites.
Right after the one I first saw in Wichita was a film which can only be described as every 70's abstract special effects show set to something that is almost but not quite the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. It's the sort of thing they would show when the Enterprise went through a nebula, a baby was being born, someone got drawn into a black hole or alien monolith orbiting Saturn.
There's a room of videos of elephants walking around.
There's a sculpture of boards that are white from three visible angles, but brightly colored on the side facing the window so it casts colored light on the white surfaces.
Up on the thrid floor there's a half hour video of a really long... wossit. You know, when puching the bell wakes the dog that scares the cat that makes the mouse run on it's wheel to turn the gnereator to make the light come on to toast the bread that... you know what I'm talking about. Well it's half an hour long... with a few edits.
In the basement there's a couple of short films both based on nightmares the artist had.
There's some other stuff, but I really should have written this the day I went because I can't remember them now.

Cirrhosis, god of hangovers

I woke up this morning with no evidence remaining of last night's ill-advised drinking. I know why, too. Praise be to Cirrhosis, the god of hangovers. Oh, you wouldn't have heard of him before. He appears in a book that I'm almost done with.
For those of you who have been following the development of this book I did finally write those last 10 pages that have been hanging over me for the last year. I'll be doing a final review this weekend before I start looking for an agent.

Cirrhosis, god of hangovers

Most of the major polytheistic faiths have at least licentatious diety. That is to say a god of wine or other alcoholic beverages. And it’s commonly assumed that this god really knows how to party. This is wrong in all meaningful respects.
The so-called god of wine is, in fact, a god of hangovers named Cirrhosis. In much the same way Jesus took the sins of the world onto himself Cirrhosis takes the hangovers of the world onto himself. This makes him easily the most miserable god in recorded history. For every time that a mortal goes on a drinking binge and comes through bright eyed and clear the next morning the hangover god wakes up with his mouth feeling not unlike the floor of an army barber and his head like a blacksmith’s hammer.
An important question I’m sure many of you are asking is how anyone could mistake a god of hangovers for a god of wine. This is actually quite simple to explain. The remedy for a hangover is a bit of the dog that bit you. So the cure for someone who takes on the hangovers of several million people a night is large quantities of alcohol. He eases into the early afternoon with a few vodka martinis for breakfast and by happy hour he’s sampled most of the 1945 Napa Valley wine season.
Not being gifted with Promethius’ mythical organs, all this drinking leaves the hangover god with some health problems. Most notable of these ailments is the way he pulls his enlarged liver behind him in a wagon.
Understandably, holidays such as Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day leave him feeling somewhat suicidal. While it is possible for a god to die Cirrhosis has far too many unwitting followers for this to happen. Cirrhosis holds the record for most number of temples built in his honor. Generally constructed entirely of porcelain, these temples each stand only about two feet tall with an oval water basin for making offerings while the worshiper kneels before this alter.

Kassy's Happy Hour

It's not really fair to call it Kassy's Happy Hour. She was one of four hosts. She's the only one I happen to read so I'm naming it for her. It's not one of the standard DC Blogger Happy Hours. Someone else puts those together. Anyway, I went. The last one I tried to go to ... well look in my archives.
Never had a Corona before tonight. I would have had something else, but when I finally found an opening in the bar it was too loud to talk and among the empty boxes near me was a Corona box. That and Bud Light. Since Bud Light tastes like proper beer passed through a horse three times I made the universal hand sign for one and then pointed at the Corona box. I wound up having four. This was three more than I intended since I was a pint short of blood. I'd been to the Red Cross mere hours before.

The bar was packed. I moved slowly into the main bar area and soon found someone who I'd never seen before. To make this clear, I'd never seen any of them before. But there was one particular person I'd never seen before. Miss KassyK. She's listed along the side if you care to see her blog. I got the afore mentioned Corona and found a place out of the flow of traffic. I tried talking to a few people with little to no success. Finally, part way through my second bottle I ran into a woman I'll just call Candy Sandwiches. I'm pretty sure that's her digital name. Lovely woman. Nice eyes, lovely smile, and she barely knew anyone there so she was willing to talk to me. We actually spent most of the evening chatting. I mean, with some repeats and some holes in understanding because it was so bloody loud.

In the morning I'll see if any of the contact information she gave me still makes any sense. I'll also reread this so see if this blog entry makes any sense.

I did get to meet Kassy properly at one point. Somewhere in my third bottle I headed for the restroom and met her going the other way. I introduced myself so I wouldn't be just that strange guy standing next to the juke box. At some point she asked me for my real name. Damned if I know why. I'm sure it made some sort of sense at the time.

Anyway, bedtime.

Solar Decathlon update

This is an update for the 17 August 2006 post Solar Decathlon

The Solar Decathlon is a competition between universities all over the world to build the best solar powered house. The houses are brought to Washington, DC and setup on the National Mall for nine days. They're opened for tours every day except Wednesday when they're sealed for judging.

It looks like the schools are just starting to get into the construction phase.

The University of Maryland has started a webcam so you can watch them work.
http://www.solarteam.org/page.php?id=442
Right now it's just 6 pillars in a lot.

Santa Clara University has an initial drawing of their house.

It's the standard mobile home shape with solar panels on the roof. And I'll bet you a Coke those wooden slats can slide over the glass doors.

Team Montreal has a video that I haven't seen yet.


Some university in Spain has a nice frame for the house.

Dunno what's inside yet. I'll have to take the Virtual Tour when I get home.
Having the solar panels separated from the roof like they do allows air to flow behind them and keep them cool and more efficient.

The University of Cincinnati has a drawing.


For the New York Institute of Technology has several pictures that are best viewed by going to http://iris.nyit.edu/solardecathlon2007/the_open_house_design.htm.

The Univerity of Texas at Austin has a nice Flash presentation.

Movie Review: The Abandoned

There was a horror film fest last year that I missed because I went to my parents' for Thanksgiving. "The Abandoned" was one of the favorites from that festival so it's getting it's own release.

It takes place in Russia and feels Russian, but the characters speak non-dubbed English most of the time so I'm not sure who made it. It FEELS Russian though. The story and the cinematography aren't something you see Americans doing.

This is also the only movie I've seen that uses doppelgangers as the spectre of choice. Doppelgangers are spirits that look like you. Normally I read about doppelgangers as warnings. The story that springs to mind is about a soldier in WWII leading his men down a road. He saw himself up the road waving at him and told his men to get back and get off the road. Some vehicles then passed them and were caught in an ambush.

In this story, however, the doppelgangers tell of an unavoidable future. They're both the Corsican Brothers and Cassandra rolled into one.

The story starts 40 years ago when a woman shows up at some Soviet house in some POS truck. When someone opens the door she's dead and her twins are in the seat next to her. Jump forward to now. A woman finds out that she has inherited some land in Russia. She goes to Russia and is driven to the land in what observant movie goers will notice as the same truck from 40 years ago. Spooky stuff starts happening almost immediately. Spooky stuff in the woods chases her into the spooky house where she meets a drowned version of herself walking the halls. Back out into the woods she chases the truck as it leaves and falls into the river.
She wakes up back in the house with the twin brother she never knew about. She spends much of the rest of the movie freaking out over little things and over absolutely nothing.
Together she and her brother explore the island that they were born on, find they can't escape, find out what happened to their family, and on midnight of their birthday the house rolls back to how it was 40 years ago and they relive the night their father flipped out.

All in all a good horror movie.

Movie Review: The Astronaut Farmer

"The Astronaut Farmer" would be Robert Heinlein's favorite movie. It's a story that isn't told often enough... in fact I've never read this story exactly. Similar stories, but they all end differently. More on that in a bit.

Billy Bob Thorton (it's hard to take anyone named Billy Bob seriously) plays Charles Farmer, a rancher who used to be on the track to the space program. When his father died he had to take time off to help the family deal with that. NASA figured the fact that he chose family over the program meant that he wasn't serious about being an astronaut and retired him.
Here it is, an unknown number of years later and he's built a rocket in his barn. He plans to do one orbit around the Earth and land in the pond in his back yard. When he goes to order the rocket fuel the government finally takes him seriously and comes to stop him.
The movie covers how he got the material, the problems he has with the bank having spent every extra dime and then some on the rocket, the lesson about never giving up your dreams, the government trying to stop him, and the issues with the neighbors who laugh much the way Noah's neighbors did as he built the Ark.

One variation I read was from one of the many old comics of the "Tales From the Crypt" genre in the 50's. In that one the farmer took his whole family in the rocket and from the inside it simulated a rocket launch with video screens showing the stars and planets. But in truth they never left the ground.

The one that I'm most reminded of is from the second of a Robert Heinlein two parter. The first story was "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and tells of Delos David Harriman who wanted so much to go to The Moon that he used his whole fortune to build a private space program. But in the end his business partners think it's too risky to allow him to go on the first rocket launch and keep him on Earth. He watches the launch and then gets back to business. It's kind of heartbreaking. It also has some interesting parallels with Sir Richard Branson and his drive to make space tourism a reality from Virgin Galactic's spaceport in New Mexico.
The second story, "Requiem", takes place many years after "The Man Who Sold The Moon". Harriman is now an old man who despite making it so trips to The Moon are commonplace has yet to be able to go himself. So he gets a couple of astronauts and together they secretly build a rocket in a barn. The secret only lasts so long and then everyone is trying to stop him. Relatives, business partners, the government, and his doctors. He's just too old and frail to make the trip. Still, they finally take off and make it to The Moon some distance from a spaceport. But the stress kills Harriman and he dies happy resting on a boulder on the surface of The Moon.
Both stories are heart wrenching tales in much the same way "The Astronaut Farmer" is.

It's a great date movie. I will definitely get this on DVD.

DARPA NASCAR

NASCAR is one of the most idiotic "sports" there are. It's about sitting in a fast moving oven that drives in circles very fast. It is primarily enjoyed by people who think evolution is yuppie yankee thinking. Interestingly enough these same people, who watch mostly to see someone die horribly, would have at one point been thrown to the lions in large arenas so that others could watch THEM die horribly.

Last night it occured to me what would make NASCAR worth watching. For the 2010 DARPA Challenge I want to see the robotic vehicles compete in a NASCAR race.

Let me backup and explain the DARPA Challenge for those of you who aren't quite as geeky.
DARPA is the research arm of the US military. They conduct lots of research and develop technology that is either flaky or cutting edge depending on whether or not it works. DARPA created the ARPANET which eventually grew into the internet.
In 2001 Congress gave them the task of making 1/3 of ground combat vehicles automated by 2015. To accomplish this DARPA created the DARPA Grand Challenge. It's a race over various terrain, various slopes, and track conditions.

In the 2004 race nobody completed the 142 mile track. In the 2005 race there were several cars that completed the 132 mile race and a few great ideas that didn't qualify for the final race, but with a bit of tweeking should make it in the 2007
race. I'm speaking specifically of a motorcycle that can stand on it's own. Given a few more years they should have pretty well got navigation of a winding road mastered and be ready to focus more on dealing with traffic. In 2006 there were a few instances of one car passing another, but nothing too serious.

In 2007 DARPA has made it the DARPA Urban Challenge. It'll be a 60 mile course that includes navigating traffic, obeying traffic laws, and merging with traffic.

By 2010 I want to see a high speed race on an established racetrack. Hopefully something more than one of the NASCAR loops. Something more like those tracks they reproduce for video games. This should provide a good number of smashups as well as helping to advance the technology.

Then by 2020 I want to see the TV show Robot Wars redone on the highway.


a vehicle being developed for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.

Book Review: Storm Front

So, a few weeks ago I went looking for the new Battlestar Galactica episode. I'm a bad person and have to download them. But I buy the DVDs when they come out. That redeems me, right? I wouldn't buy them if I hadn't downloaded them first.
My initial point was that on Saturday morning there wasn't a new episode. I had to investigate. Turned out Sci-Fi Channel had moved their good shows from Friday night to Sunday night. But on their main page they were showing the pilot of the show that was partnering with BSG now that the Doctor Who series 2 was over. This new show is "The Dresden Files". The pilot is available for free download at http://www.scifi.com/dresden/index.html. You'll need iTunes. You may remember me mentioning that Nicholas Cage is one of the Executive Producers.
The show is based on a series of books by the same name. I saw them on the shelf at Books-A-Million so I picked up the first one. Having seen a few episodes and read the book I'd have to say they're pretty close except for a few fine details that don't really matter. It's like the differences between Star Trek TV shows and Star Trek movies. It's just a few details in the sppearance. The book would be like a 2-3 part episode that tells a bigger story and drags you back next season.

Harry Dresden is a wizard. Not the only wizard, but he is the only one listed in the Yellow Pages. He doesn't do love potions, he doesn't do birthday parties, and he doesn't give lessons. What he does is some consultation with the cops, find lost objects, make wards, and banish some of the nastier supernatural beings. It's told like a private eye story. His point of view, constantly low on rent, beat on by the
occasional thug, and magic is discussed much like a PI might discuss his gun.
He has a being that lives in a skull covered in runes. In the books the skull talks, in the show it manifests but has no physical being. Then there's the White Council who has a one strike and your out philosophy on Harry. He'd killed his uncle, a dark wizard, in self-defense. Some members of the White Council want Harry put to death for that while others accept the self-defense story. As a whole they're ready to kill him if he slips up once. He also has a... not a truant officer... a ... wossit. You know, you're on parole so you have to ... parole officer of sorts. Alas, the parole officer is among those who want him dead for killing his uncle.

In Storm Front there's a dark wizard who has been dealing a drug that gives users the power of third sight. You see things you really don't want to. Wizards at least can control the sight. This new drug is cutting into the market for regular drugs and the local mob isn't happy. So the dark wizard is ripping out the hearts of people remotely to send a message to the mob and anyone he sees as a threat.
The police have asked Harry to help investigate the murders. The mob wants to handle this themselves so they're warning Harry off. The parole officer thinks Harry is responsible for the murders and is bringing in The White Council to charge him and execute him. Soon the police think Harry is responsible and are trying to arrest him. Some demon screws up a date by trying to kill him. And the dark wizard is gonna rip out Harry's heart in the next storm.
The stories have the feel of old detective stories. They're told from Harry's POV but without all that "The rain beat down on the dark city washing the filth from the gutters and keeping the garbage at home where it's dry." stuff.

I picked up the next several books in the series.

p.s. Besides myself I've seen 2 other people reading the series on the subway.