Sunday, February 28
Saturday, February 27
Sorry to all you non-Americans...
Let's see if our own citizens know who's on their money. No cheating! You'll only hurt yourself, in the end. Somehow.
Whose portrait is featured on the...
$1 bill?
$2 bill?
$5 bill?
$10 bill?
$20 bill?
$50 bill?
$100 bill?
$500 bill?*
$1000 bill?*
Penny?
Nickel?
Dime?
Quarter?
Fifty-cent piece?
Dollar coin? (There are several correct answers; I'll take any of them)
Anyone is welcome to play of course, not just Americans, though it might be more difficult for you...
*These and even higher-denomination bills are no longer printer over concerns of counterfeiting and of use by drug cartels, the mafia, and other unsavory types. Therefore, bonus points (2 pts) if you can get these to correct. It could make up for lost points elsewhere!
A bit bleak, but a great song. Don't let it get you down.
"No Surprises"
A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't speak for us
I'll take a quiet life
A handshake
Of carbon monoxide
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
Silent, silent
This is my final fit
My final
Bellyache with
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises please
Such a pretty house
Such a pretty garden...
No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises please (let me out of here).
(Thom Yorke, Radiohead)
A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't speak for us
I'll take a quiet life
A handshake
Of carbon monoxide
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
Silent, silent
This is my final fit
My final
Bellyache with
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises please
Such a pretty house
Such a pretty garden...
No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises (let me out of here)
No alarms and no surprises please (let me out of here).
(Thom Yorke, Radiohead)
QUAKE
Big old quake in Chile... 8.8 on the Richer Scale! Fortunately, the damage appears to be far less than it could have been given a quake of that magnitude. Track the ongoing story here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8540742.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8540742.stm
Thursday, February 25
Thursday, February 18
Monday, February 15
In a glade.
In a glade near the Danube river,
there is a nightingale singing,
he sings to gather everyone from his family.
In a glade near the Danube river,
there is a bass vibrating and a fiddle crying,
I think of a place where my lovely one is strolling now...
In a glade near the Danube river,
I am sick with my loneliness,
crying, I want to fly like a bird, to where my lovely one is now.
(traditional Ukrainian folk song)
In a glade near the Danube river,
there is a nightingale singing,
he sings to gather everyone from his family.
In a glade near the Danube river,
there is a bass vibrating and a fiddle crying,
I think of a place where my lovely one is strolling now...
In a glade near the Danube river,
I am sick with my loneliness,
crying, I want to fly like a bird, to where my lovely one is now.
(traditional Ukrainian folk song)
Cool, but not the extended versions.
Apparently those will be released on Blu-ray as well, once some time is given for the theatrical releases to sell.
Why the extended movies aren't all you can buy at this point seems silly to me, as they are so much better. If anything I'd add an extra hour or two to each of the extended editions - they still wouldn't even scratch the surface of the detail to be found in the novels. One would think the theatrical versions had served their purpose of packing more paying customers into theaters, but should now quietly go away....
Surprisingly, many people actually don't like long movies, period, and are pretty vehement about it.
Of course I recognize that some films should have been edited more tightly, but 'running time' as such is never on my list of criticisms; movies to me are either worth seeing or they're not — fully realized, or not. Some stories simply demand more time than others to stretch their wings fully, and should be given that. Pure action, horror, and comedy generally run their creative course in far less time than epic adventure or sweeping historical drama. My point is, a film should run as long as it needs to in order that it be the best film it can be - no more and no less.
But obviously not everyone sees it this way, and that's fine. The thing is, for those kind of people with short attention spans who prefer 90 min movies and actually complain when movies are "too long," the theatrical editions of all three of the LOTR movies are likely too long for them anyways! They were all still nearly 3 hours.
Might as well go all out and see the whole 12 hour enchilada, in my mind, if you're going to undertake the journey into Middle Earth in the first place. But, whatever. New Line obviously see more money to be made this way, and anyway I've read that we'll see the extended set in 2010. They're not going to make us wait a whole lot longer. Hopefully by the summer, and if not, then certainly as a holiday release.
Why the extended movies aren't all you can buy at this point seems silly to me, as they are so much better. If anything I'd add an extra hour or two to each of the extended editions - they still wouldn't even scratch the surface of the detail to be found in the novels. One would think the theatrical versions had served their purpose of packing more paying customers into theaters, but should now quietly go away....
Surprisingly, many people actually don't like long movies, period, and are pretty vehement about it.
Of course I recognize that some films should have been edited more tightly, but 'running time' as such is never on my list of criticisms; movies to me are either worth seeing or they're not — fully realized, or not. Some stories simply demand more time than others to stretch their wings fully, and should be given that. Pure action, horror, and comedy generally run their creative course in far less time than epic adventure or sweeping historical drama. My point is, a film should run as long as it needs to in order that it be the best film it can be - no more and no less.
But obviously not everyone sees it this way, and that's fine. The thing is, for those kind of people with short attention spans who prefer 90 min movies and actually complain when movies are "too long," the theatrical editions of all three of the LOTR movies are likely too long for them anyways! They were all still nearly 3 hours.
Might as well go all out and see the whole 12 hour enchilada, in my mind, if you're going to undertake the journey into Middle Earth in the first place. But, whatever. New Line obviously see more money to be made this way, and anyway I've read that we'll see the extended set in 2010. They're not going to make us wait a whole lot longer. Hopefully by the summer, and if not, then certainly as a holiday release.
Saturday, February 13
Friday, February 12
Thursday, February 11
Tuesday, February 9
Wednesday, February 3
Terence Trent D'Arby covering "A Change Is Gonna Come"
This generation's Sam Cooke? I'm gonna post more about Terence soon, but he's certainly got those "throw back" pipes plus a raw feeling for music and the impeccable timing to be compared with the greats - Sam, Otis, Marvin, et al.
More to come...this is just a teaser :)
Monday, February 1
Please continue to help Haiti.
This video is a couple weeks old, but don't think the suffering has gone away. If anything, with the dramatic earthquakes and people trapped in rubble or inside collapsed buildings having subsided, the danger is that the world breathes a sigh of relief and returns to its daily business.
But Haiti before this disaster was the poorest country in the western hemisphere; one of the poorest in the world. They were barely a functioning "country" at all. And now, in the wake of their terrible natural disaster, hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives have been made even harder, past the point of poverty, to the point of complete homelessness and starvation. It will go on for months, people dying not because of the earthquake but because they live on a piece of land which no longer functions as a country.
Please help in anyway you can.
But Haiti before this disaster was the poorest country in the western hemisphere; one of the poorest in the world. They were barely a functioning "country" at all. And now, in the wake of their terrible natural disaster, hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives have been made even harder, past the point of poverty, to the point of complete homelessness and starvation. It will go on for months, people dying not because of the earthquake but because they live on a piece of land which no longer functions as a country.
Please help in anyway you can.
Goodbye, Anonymous, we hardly knew ye.
I had to block anonymous posting. After years of luck, I've started getting a spam post under the "anonymous" heading every few days. They seem to appear on random blog posts, some going back years. I know about them right away though because the spam goes to my email as any other response would.
So I figured I'd better shut down that exhaust port before some wise-ass Jedi kid come by and shoots some real blast torpedoes into it. I'm still not resorting to the verification text yet, because it's such an annoyance to the users. But in the future I can't guarantee that I won't have to.
Anyway, I hope the lack of the ability to post anonymously doesn't hamper anyone too much. You can use any "OpenID" login to post still - it can be a Blogger account, but there are other blog formats that all participate in that open standard of a login/password gate, so I'm trying my best to keep it wide open to as many people as possible without letting the bad guys in.
Thanks.
So I figured I'd better shut down that exhaust port before some wise-ass Jedi kid come by and shoots some real blast torpedoes into it. I'm still not resorting to the verification text yet, because it's such an annoyance to the users. But in the future I can't guarantee that I won't have to.
Anyway, I hope the lack of the ability to post anonymously doesn't hamper anyone too much. You can use any "OpenID" login to post still - it can be a Blogger account, but there are other blog formats that all participate in that open standard of a login/password gate, so I'm trying my best to keep it wide open to as many people as possible without letting the bad guys in.
Thanks.
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