Friday, October 21, 2005
Call Me Captain
Click on the image below to find out which Science Fiction/Fantasy character you are:
Thursday, October 20, 2005
That Answers That Question
So how do you make Rachael Leigh Cook even cuter?
As this picture shows, you simply muss up her hair.
I cranked this one out rather quickly, as it was pretty straightforward, and, despite the fact that it was RLC, I got sick of it in a hurry.
It was one of those contradictory kind of things: I wanted to draw it because I found the disheveled look of her hair to be an appealing challenge, but I got sick of drawing it because the disheveled look of her hair was a pain in the ass to replicate.
So it doesn’t look as good as it could if I’d been willing to put more effort into it, but overall I think it’s okay.
On the topic of mussed-up hair making a woman look more appealing, I always remember this show I was watching years ago on TV in which some stylist was talking about Cindy Crawford, and how there’s really nothing he needs to do to make her hair look good. He then asked Cindy, who was standing next to him, to demonstrate his point.
She proceeded to put her hands in her hair, bend forward, vigorously run her hands back and forth through her hair, whip her head back, give a quick toss, and voila! The perfect mussed-up look.
The overall effect of the mussing of her hair seemed to say, “I just rolled out of bed, where I was most likely doing something naughty, and I still look this good.”
Last week I mentioned that I’d started on a new original picture that I would finish this week.
…
I really didn’t do anything creative this week, so I never got to work on that picture.
Still, I felt like I should do something, hence the RLC pic.
As I write this it’s 5:30 and I’m doing so on my old computer, which means that I will not have my new computer until Monday.
*Sigh*
Oh well. It’s not like I really would have had enough time to get it set up tonight anyway.
In any case, I hope your weekend isn’t as long as mine is going to seem…
As this picture shows, you simply muss up her hair.
I cranked this one out rather quickly, as it was pretty straightforward, and, despite the fact that it was RLC, I got sick of it in a hurry.
It was one of those contradictory kind of things: I wanted to draw it because I found the disheveled look of her hair to be an appealing challenge, but I got sick of drawing it because the disheveled look of her hair was a pain in the ass to replicate.
So it doesn’t look as good as it could if I’d been willing to put more effort into it, but overall I think it’s okay.
On the topic of mussed-up hair making a woman look more appealing, I always remember this show I was watching years ago on TV in which some stylist was talking about Cindy Crawford, and how there’s really nothing he needs to do to make her hair look good. He then asked Cindy, who was standing next to him, to demonstrate his point.
She proceeded to put her hands in her hair, bend forward, vigorously run her hands back and forth through her hair, whip her head back, give a quick toss, and voila! The perfect mussed-up look.
The overall effect of the mussing of her hair seemed to say, “I just rolled out of bed, where I was most likely doing something naughty, and I still look this good.”
Last week I mentioned that I’d started on a new original picture that I would finish this week.
…
I really didn’t do anything creative this week, so I never got to work on that picture.
Still, I felt like I should do something, hence the RLC pic.
As I write this it’s 5:30 and I’m doing so on my old computer, which means that I will not have my new computer until Monday.
*Sigh*
Oh well. It’s not like I really would have had enough time to get it set up tonight anyway.
In any case, I hope your weekend isn’t as long as mine is going to seem…
Beating A Path To My Window
I will no doubt spend a good portion of today wearing a path in my carpet from my desk to my window in response to anything that sounds even remotely like a UPS truck in the parking lot.
It annoys me that Dell doesn’t provide an actual tracking number, just a rough estimate on when you might receive your item.
Previous experience has taught me that orders placed over the weekend arrive on Thursday, though, so I’m seriously hoping it will get here today.
The biggest problem, though, is that I have no idea when UPS usually arrives, as they seem to have a pretty random delivery schedule.
Sometimes they arrive early in the morning, sometimes, like yesterday, they don’t come until close to 5.
However, that late an arrival usually seems to be some sort of “special” delivery to someone in one of the other buildings, as they invariably only make the one stop at the same building, and often it’s their second stop in the complex for the day.
So yesterday, when I saw the UPS truck over at the other building at around 4:45, even though I knew better, I still got my hopes up, so when the driver finished dropping off whatever it was, got in his truck and whizzed past mine and all of the other buildings, he did so oblivious to the fact that I was giving him the finger and calling him a cocksucker.
I can’t help but wonder what makes the person in the other building so special that he doesn’t get his deliveries at the same time the rest of riff raff do.
In any case, not much else is going on, so I believe I will get back to getting ready for the eventual transition to the new computer, which is bound to happen sometime…
It annoys me that Dell doesn’t provide an actual tracking number, just a rough estimate on when you might receive your item.
Previous experience has taught me that orders placed over the weekend arrive on Thursday, though, so I’m seriously hoping it will get here today.
The biggest problem, though, is that I have no idea when UPS usually arrives, as they seem to have a pretty random delivery schedule.
Sometimes they arrive early in the morning, sometimes, like yesterday, they don’t come until close to 5.
However, that late an arrival usually seems to be some sort of “special” delivery to someone in one of the other buildings, as they invariably only make the one stop at the same building, and often it’s their second stop in the complex for the day.
So yesterday, when I saw the UPS truck over at the other building at around 4:45, even though I knew better, I still got my hopes up, so when the driver finished dropping off whatever it was, got in his truck and whizzed past mine and all of the other buildings, he did so oblivious to the fact that I was giving him the finger and calling him a cocksucker.
I can’t help but wonder what makes the person in the other building so special that he doesn’t get his deliveries at the same time the rest of riff raff do.
In any case, not much else is going on, so I believe I will get back to getting ready for the eventual transition to the new computer, which is bound to happen sometime…
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The "ize" Have It
Yesterday my company went through a major reorganization (read: people got canned).
For the most part I remain largely unaffected by it, though in my department there was an actual reorganization in which different groups were brought together under one umbrella, and the amount of canning involved was minimal.
What does this mean for the future? It’s difficult to say, though I did go in for a meeting in which some aspects of the change were laid out, though clearly there’s still much that’s up in the air.
It looks as though for the foreseeable future my current position will remain largely unchanged, unless I choose to seek out one of the other opportunities that may present itself to me as part of this reorganization.
There’s really only one concern I have abut it all, as they are talking, in a general sense, about changing the current shift set-up. I can only hope that whatever changes they introduce will not involve having to move from a three day work week to a four day, or – God forbid – a five day work week…
It had been my hope that when I returned from the meeting there would be a note on my door from UPS indicating that my computer was waiting for me at the office, but no such luck. That’s hardly surprising, though; hope and I are two things that should probably stay as far away from each other as possible…
As long-time Threshold readers know, I’m pretty much opposed to the very concept of keeping pets, so certainly you’ll never see me at the store picking up kitty litter or flea collars.
However, over the years there have been a number of stray peeves and gripes that I’ve taken in and cared for, some of which I’ve nurtured well into their maturity.
The latest hungry peeve to show up on my doorstep is the practice of adding the suffix “ize” to words in order to form a new word.
This is becoming an extremely common practice in the business world, taking over for the equally annoying practice of adding “wise” to words (“What’s this going to cost us, money-wise?” “Anyone know how things are looking weather-wise?” “How much are we going to need to invest time-wise?” Note that there are much easier – and less idiotic – things that you could say, language-wise, to get the same idea across. “How much will this cost?” “What’s the weather like?” “How long will this take?”)
At work I’ve repeatedly encountered one such victim of this word mangling: processize. It means to implement an idea as a work process, but to my ear it just sounds ridiculous, and I’m of the opinion that there just has to be a better way to express the same idea.
I was thinking about this when I was out on my morning walk and I found myself actually engaging in the act of “izing.”
A few days ago I came up with and idea that involved making use of a wiki (I love the URL in that link; it’s too bad there isn’t a third “wiki”in it to make it wiki wiki wiki, for anyone out there who may remember the song “Jam On It.”)
The basic idea is pretty cool, I think, but actually implementing it would take a lot of time and effort, so I was trying to come up with a way in which I could – ugh – monetize the idea.
Actually, “monetize” isn’t too bad a word, as it does get the idea across, but even so, as soon as I thought it I found my mind hurtling off track and I began thinking about the annoying tendency that people have to suffixize.
And what, you may wonder, is this great idea I have involving a wiki? Well, you’re just going to have to keep wonderizing, as I’m going to continue to secretize it while I considerize my options…
In all honesty, though, the “ize” thing isn’t nearly as irritating as the media adding “gate” to the name of every political scandal. It was called the Watergate Hotel, you jackasses. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t just arbitrarily tack on a suffix: it was already part of the name.
So enough with the Iran-Contragates, and the stained dressgates, and the no weapons of mass destructiongates already.
Beyond the meeting and my computer continuing to not arrive, today was pretty uneventful, so I think that will do it for this entry.
For the most part I remain largely unaffected by it, though in my department there was an actual reorganization in which different groups were brought together under one umbrella, and the amount of canning involved was minimal.
What does this mean for the future? It’s difficult to say, though I did go in for a meeting in which some aspects of the change were laid out, though clearly there’s still much that’s up in the air.
It looks as though for the foreseeable future my current position will remain largely unchanged, unless I choose to seek out one of the other opportunities that may present itself to me as part of this reorganization.
There’s really only one concern I have abut it all, as they are talking, in a general sense, about changing the current shift set-up. I can only hope that whatever changes they introduce will not involve having to move from a three day work week to a four day, or – God forbid – a five day work week…
It had been my hope that when I returned from the meeting there would be a note on my door from UPS indicating that my computer was waiting for me at the office, but no such luck. That’s hardly surprising, though; hope and I are two things that should probably stay as far away from each other as possible…
As long-time Threshold readers know, I’m pretty much opposed to the very concept of keeping pets, so certainly you’ll never see me at the store picking up kitty litter or flea collars.
However, over the years there have been a number of stray peeves and gripes that I’ve taken in and cared for, some of which I’ve nurtured well into their maturity.
The latest hungry peeve to show up on my doorstep is the practice of adding the suffix “ize” to words in order to form a new word.
This is becoming an extremely common practice in the business world, taking over for the equally annoying practice of adding “wise” to words (“What’s this going to cost us, money-wise?” “Anyone know how things are looking weather-wise?” “How much are we going to need to invest time-wise?” Note that there are much easier – and less idiotic – things that you could say, language-wise, to get the same idea across. “How much will this cost?” “What’s the weather like?” “How long will this take?”)
At work I’ve repeatedly encountered one such victim of this word mangling: processize. It means to implement an idea as a work process, but to my ear it just sounds ridiculous, and I’m of the opinion that there just has to be a better way to express the same idea.
I was thinking about this when I was out on my morning walk and I found myself actually engaging in the act of “izing.”
A few days ago I came up with and idea that involved making use of a wiki (I love the URL in that link; it’s too bad there isn’t a third “wiki”in it to make it wiki wiki wiki, for anyone out there who may remember the song “Jam On It.”)
The basic idea is pretty cool, I think, but actually implementing it would take a lot of time and effort, so I was trying to come up with a way in which I could – ugh – monetize the idea.
Actually, “monetize” isn’t too bad a word, as it does get the idea across, but even so, as soon as I thought it I found my mind hurtling off track and I began thinking about the annoying tendency that people have to suffixize.
And what, you may wonder, is this great idea I have involving a wiki? Well, you’re just going to have to keep wonderizing, as I’m going to continue to secretize it while I considerize my options…
In all honesty, though, the “ize” thing isn’t nearly as irritating as the media adding “gate” to the name of every political scandal. It was called the Watergate Hotel, you jackasses. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t just arbitrarily tack on a suffix: it was already part of the name.
So enough with the Iran-Contragates, and the stained dressgates, and the no weapons of mass destructiongates already.
Beyond the meeting and my computer continuing to not arrive, today was pretty uneventful, so I think that will do it for this entry.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Blood And Mint
I’ve never understood the mentality behind flavoring dental floss.
What’s the anticipated result? “Oh boy, that vague mint flavor really makes up for the fact that the floss is slicing into my gums! And nothing beats that blood and mint flavor combination!”
It was a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up toiletries and sundry other items that brought that particular thought to mind.
While there, I picked up the DVD of “Batman Begins.”
From Wal-Mart I made my way home with a stop at the grocery store along the way.
Excepting the walk I went on this morning before heading out to Wal-Mart, that was pretty much my day.
At home I’ve been working on cleaning up my files to help ease the transition to the new computer.
Mostly I’ve been using a program called Picasa from Google to rename and organize the various pictures I’ve got stockpiled on my hard drive.
I’ve been listening to Liz Phair’s latest album “Somebody’s Miracle” a lot lately, and so far it’s failed to grow on me.
My first exposure to Liz Phair, beyond simply knowing that she existed, came with her last album, 2003’s self-titled “Liz Phair.”
It was a very commercially successful album, with a polished, commercial pop sound, though it did have something of an alternative edge.
Overall, I liked it. I liked it enough to look into her earlier work, which I liked a great deal more, and though it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of “Liz Phair,” I could understand the complaints that many of her original fans had about the more radio-friendly album.
I get the distinct impression that “Miracle” is an attempt at reaching a happy medium between the low-fidelity indie pop sound of her earlier works and the slick, overly-produced bubblegum pop of her self-titled album.
The problem, though, is that the recipe she used to try to achieve this result is a little too infused with a country flavor.
In particular on “Got My Own Thing,” a song replete with steel guitar (or whatever the hell kind of guitar that is that does the whole honky-tonk twang thing), there are definite moments in which it sounds like Liz Phair is doing Shania Twain – and not in a good, “Where The Boys Aren’t Volume 50: Pop Star Edition” kind of way.
There some nice lyrical touches throughout the album that stand out, though, such as the chorus of the title track:
Baby, There goes somebody's miracle
Walking down the street
There goes some other fairy tale
I wish it could happen to me
But I look at myself
Wonderin' if i'm just too weak
To have such faith in myself
And of course, the best line in the song (italics added for emphasis):
I never cry out loud, I
I keep my tears to myself
But I woke up one day and I found my life had left me for someone else
I, I guess it must be unhappywith me
Despite the fact that I myself am not “pretty as a song,” as Liz claims “they” say about her, I do often find myself able to relate to many (though not all) of the ideas Liz expresses, and on every album there is at least one song that really resonates with me.
This album is no exception. The title track, of course, has a certain resonance, but the song that really hits me in the chest is “Table For One.”
The title alone is appropriate to my life, but the resonance builds from there.
Still, I remain more than a little disappointed in the album.
In any case, it’s getting to be close to “My Name is Earl” time, so I think I’ll end this entry here.
What’s the anticipated result? “Oh boy, that vague mint flavor really makes up for the fact that the floss is slicing into my gums! And nothing beats that blood and mint flavor combination!”
It was a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up toiletries and sundry other items that brought that particular thought to mind.
While there, I picked up the DVD of “Batman Begins.”
From Wal-Mart I made my way home with a stop at the grocery store along the way.
Excepting the walk I went on this morning before heading out to Wal-Mart, that was pretty much my day.
At home I’ve been working on cleaning up my files to help ease the transition to the new computer.
Mostly I’ve been using a program called Picasa from Google to rename and organize the various pictures I’ve got stockpiled on my hard drive.
I’ve been listening to Liz Phair’s latest album “Somebody’s Miracle” a lot lately, and so far it’s failed to grow on me.
My first exposure to Liz Phair, beyond simply knowing that she existed, came with her last album, 2003’s self-titled “Liz Phair.”
It was a very commercially successful album, with a polished, commercial pop sound, though it did have something of an alternative edge.
Overall, I liked it. I liked it enough to look into her earlier work, which I liked a great deal more, and though it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of “Liz Phair,” I could understand the complaints that many of her original fans had about the more radio-friendly album.
I get the distinct impression that “Miracle” is an attempt at reaching a happy medium between the low-fidelity indie pop sound of her earlier works and the slick, overly-produced bubblegum pop of her self-titled album.
The problem, though, is that the recipe she used to try to achieve this result is a little too infused with a country flavor.
In particular on “Got My Own Thing,” a song replete with steel guitar (or whatever the hell kind of guitar that is that does the whole honky-tonk twang thing), there are definite moments in which it sounds like Liz Phair is doing Shania Twain – and not in a good, “Where The Boys Aren’t Volume 50: Pop Star Edition” kind of way.
There some nice lyrical touches throughout the album that stand out, though, such as the chorus of the title track:
Baby, There goes somebody's miracle
Walking down the street
There goes some other fairy tale
I wish it could happen to me
But I look at myself
Wonderin' if i'm just too weak
To have such faith in myself
And of course, the best line in the song (italics added for emphasis):
I never cry out loud, I
I keep my tears to myself
But I woke up one day and I found my life had left me for someone else
I, I guess it must be unhappywith me
Despite the fact that I myself am not “pretty as a song,” as Liz claims “they” say about her, I do often find myself able to relate to many (though not all) of the ideas Liz expresses, and on every album there is at least one song that really resonates with me.
This album is no exception. The title track, of course, has a certain resonance, but the song that really hits me in the chest is “Table For One.”
The title alone is appropriate to my life, but the resonance builds from there.
Still, I remain more than a little disappointed in the album.
In any case, it’s getting to be close to “My Name is Earl” time, so I think I’ll end this entry here.
Monday, October 17, 2005
"Very Cool" Doesn't Even BEGIN To Describe It
I found this link over at Neil Gaiman's blog:
Time's 100 Best English-language novels from 1923-Present
If you go down to "W," you might see why I'm so pleased.
In case you don't see it on your own, go here.
The coolest part? Look at the Reader's Choice for Number 1.
Such a surprising display of good taste. There may be hope for humanity yet...
Time's 100 Best English-language novels from 1923-Present
If you go down to "W," you might see why I'm so pleased.
In case you don't see it on your own, go here.
The coolest part? Look at the Reader's Choice for Number 1.
Such a surprising display of good taste. There may be hope for humanity yet...
The Wait Is The Hardest Part, Fast Pans Do NOT Equal "Style," And 15 Years Of IMDb Goodness
Sometime yesterday I began to regret the fact that I didn’t shell out the extra hundred dollars to get my new computer shipped faster.
As it stands, the earliest I’ll get it is Wednesday, but more likely I won’t get it until Thursday. Worst case scenario is Friday, as that would mean not getting my hands on it until Monday…assuming that the “Who cares?” attitude of the office staff doesn’t lead to someone else walking off with it.
Of course, once I do get it, the first several hours spent messing around with it will just be irritating anyway, as it’ll take a lot of bother to get files transferred over, set things up the way I want them, and get rid of all of the useless crap that Dell will have preinstalled on it.
Still, it’ll be nice to have a new, more up-to-date system, as my current system, at a positively ancient two years old, is definitely starting to show its age…
My three days of work seemed especially long this time around. Saturday was kind of annoying, as illnesses and vacations meant that for most of the day there were only two of us working the desk, though by the second half of the day Scott was feeling better and came in.
We got lucky, though, as despite being short-handed it was a very uneventful day.
So far today has also been uneventful.
I absent-mindedly reset my alarm yesterday morning rather than turning it off, so I had a brief moment of panic this morning when my alarm went off at 4:15 and I thought about how I just really couldn’t bear to put in another day at work before realizing that I didn’t have to because it was Monday and I had just absent-mindedly reset the alarm yesterday morning.
From that point I slept until my mother called at 9:30.
After I got off the phone I just sort of sat around for a while and tried to decide whether or not I was going to go grocery shopping today. I decided that I wasn’t, but that I still needed to get around to putting in the new decal in my car window that shows that I’ve paid my property tax.
That took a lot less effort than I anticipated, as apparently I’d been bright enough to not affix the old one too securely, so after I finished that I went for a walk, as it was a very sunny, if somewhat cool, autumn day.
While I was walking I had left my computer downloading a bootleg copy of the movie “Domino,” which is very loosely based on the life of the late Domino Harvey, a model (supposedly, at least) turned bounty hunter.
While movie piracy may be wrong, I have to say that I’m glad I didn’t spend any money to see this movie, as the investment of time spent watching it was itself too expensive.
As you may have guessed, I didn’t enjoy the movie.
It consisted primarily of washed-out colors, too-fast camera pans, and series of tenuously connected events tied together in a convoluted fashion so as to simulate having a plot.
The only redeeming value the movie had is that Keira Knightley, thin and small-breasted though she may be, is extremely cute, and perhaps if we had ever gotten any sort of lingering shots of her, that extreme cuteness might have gone a little ways towards making the movie bearable.
However, moviemakers haven’t given us a lingering shot of anything since the launch of MTV in 1981.
At least the moviemakers who try to be stylish, as, apparently, making sure that your audience has no clue what the fuck is going on equals being stylish.
Anyway, the movie was pretty much a complete waste of time.
And that was more or less my day.
A long time ago I had a dream that Brian had killed a friend of mine. When I confronted him about this, he ended up giving me a severe beating. Though I couldn’t prove that he’d killed my friend, the assault on me did at least lead to him using his job…at which point everyone at work got mad at me for getting Brian fired.
Waking up from the dream, I found myself, quite irrationally, being totally pissed at Brian, even hours later. As it turns out, Brian came in late to work that day, which was just as well, as it gave me time to become more fully rational and recognize that I had no reason to be angry at him.
Over the weekend I found myself waking up in the middle of the night pissed off at my friend Kevin.
Why? Because he doesn’t have a younger sister.
I promise; that statement will make sense (sort of) in just a second.
Basically, Saturday night I’d had a dream, the details of which are hazy, in which Kevin had a very cute, smart, and charmingly quirky younger sister who totally had the hots for me, and after years of lusting after me in silence she finally made her move, and a very aggressive move at that.
Somewhere along the line I awoke from the dream, still flush with the promise of a new romance before reality set back in and I realized that no such sister exists.
Stupid Kevin, not having a cute, smart, charmingly quirky younger sister…
Many Happy Returns Dept.
On the topic of movies, for nearly as long as I’ve been making use of the Internet, IMBb, the Internet Movie Database, has been an invaluable resource to me, preventing many sleepless nights that might otherwise have consisted of me trying to figure out who “that guy in that one movie” was, nights in which, after finally falling asleep I would be jolted awake by my subconscious finally sussing out that it was Miles O’Keefe (or someone even more obscure)
In any case, the IMDb is 15 years old today.
Sure, I have my problems with the IMDb: the ads are irritating, search results often bury the relevant items, and of course, as I’ve mentioned before, the message boards have consumed countless hours of my life.
But despite these annoyances, I know it will always be there for me to help me get to sleep at night, and to resolve those inevitable disputes about who starred in what. I often consider making it my browser’s default home page because I visit it so often.
So happy birthday, IMDb! Here’s hoping you’ll be around to help me get to sleep for years to come.
As it stands, the earliest I’ll get it is Wednesday, but more likely I won’t get it until Thursday. Worst case scenario is Friday, as that would mean not getting my hands on it until Monday…assuming that the “Who cares?” attitude of the office staff doesn’t lead to someone else walking off with it.
Of course, once I do get it, the first several hours spent messing around with it will just be irritating anyway, as it’ll take a lot of bother to get files transferred over, set things up the way I want them, and get rid of all of the useless crap that Dell will have preinstalled on it.
Still, it’ll be nice to have a new, more up-to-date system, as my current system, at a positively ancient two years old, is definitely starting to show its age…
My three days of work seemed especially long this time around. Saturday was kind of annoying, as illnesses and vacations meant that for most of the day there were only two of us working the desk, though by the second half of the day Scott was feeling better and came in.
We got lucky, though, as despite being short-handed it was a very uneventful day.
So far today has also been uneventful.
I absent-mindedly reset my alarm yesterday morning rather than turning it off, so I had a brief moment of panic this morning when my alarm went off at 4:15 and I thought about how I just really couldn’t bear to put in another day at work before realizing that I didn’t have to because it was Monday and I had just absent-mindedly reset the alarm yesterday morning.
From that point I slept until my mother called at 9:30.
After I got off the phone I just sort of sat around for a while and tried to decide whether or not I was going to go grocery shopping today. I decided that I wasn’t, but that I still needed to get around to putting in the new decal in my car window that shows that I’ve paid my property tax.
That took a lot less effort than I anticipated, as apparently I’d been bright enough to not affix the old one too securely, so after I finished that I went for a walk, as it was a very sunny, if somewhat cool, autumn day.
While I was walking I had left my computer downloading a bootleg copy of the movie “Domino,” which is very loosely based on the life of the late Domino Harvey, a model (supposedly, at least) turned bounty hunter.
While movie piracy may be wrong, I have to say that I’m glad I didn’t spend any money to see this movie, as the investment of time spent watching it was itself too expensive.
As you may have guessed, I didn’t enjoy the movie.
It consisted primarily of washed-out colors, too-fast camera pans, and series of tenuously connected events tied together in a convoluted fashion so as to simulate having a plot.
The only redeeming value the movie had is that Keira Knightley, thin and small-breasted though she may be, is extremely cute, and perhaps if we had ever gotten any sort of lingering shots of her, that extreme cuteness might have gone a little ways towards making the movie bearable.
However, moviemakers haven’t given us a lingering shot of anything since the launch of MTV in 1981.
At least the moviemakers who try to be stylish, as, apparently, making sure that your audience has no clue what the fuck is going on equals being stylish.
Anyway, the movie was pretty much a complete waste of time.
And that was more or less my day.
A long time ago I had a dream that Brian had killed a friend of mine. When I confronted him about this, he ended up giving me a severe beating. Though I couldn’t prove that he’d killed my friend, the assault on me did at least lead to him using his job…at which point everyone at work got mad at me for getting Brian fired.
Waking up from the dream, I found myself, quite irrationally, being totally pissed at Brian, even hours later. As it turns out, Brian came in late to work that day, which was just as well, as it gave me time to become more fully rational and recognize that I had no reason to be angry at him.
Over the weekend I found myself waking up in the middle of the night pissed off at my friend Kevin.
Why? Because he doesn’t have a younger sister.
I promise; that statement will make sense (sort of) in just a second.
Basically, Saturday night I’d had a dream, the details of which are hazy, in which Kevin had a very cute, smart, and charmingly quirky younger sister who totally had the hots for me, and after years of lusting after me in silence she finally made her move, and a very aggressive move at that.
Somewhere along the line I awoke from the dream, still flush with the promise of a new romance before reality set back in and I realized that no such sister exists.
Stupid Kevin, not having a cute, smart, charmingly quirky younger sister…
Many Happy Returns Dept.
On the topic of movies, for nearly as long as I’ve been making use of the Internet, IMBb, the Internet Movie Database, has been an invaluable resource to me, preventing many sleepless nights that might otherwise have consisted of me trying to figure out who “that guy in that one movie” was, nights in which, after finally falling asleep I would be jolted awake by my subconscious finally sussing out that it was Miles O’Keefe (or someone even more obscure)
In any case, the IMDb is 15 years old today.
Sure, I have my problems with the IMDb: the ads are irritating, search results often bury the relevant items, and of course, as I’ve mentioned before, the message boards have consumed countless hours of my life.
But despite these annoyances, I know it will always be there for me to help me get to sleep at night, and to resolve those inevitable disputes about who starred in what. I often consider making it my browser’s default home page because I visit it so often.
So happy birthday, IMDb! Here’s hoping you’ll be around to help me get to sleep for years to come.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Comic Book Characters Come To Life
I've mentioned before how I often see real people who look like the drawings of certain comic book artists come to life.
Jessica Simpson, for example, is a classic Adam Hughes.
There's one artist in particular, though, whose style I most often see exemplified by real people: John Byrne.
I recently found a prime example of this phenomenon in the form of this picture of Keira Knightley:
Now, if you know Byrne's work, you'll most likely immediately see what I'm talking about: the eyebrows, the shape of her face, the slightly parted lips...all classic Byrne elements.
Of course, odds are that you aren't familiar with Byrne, so I've done some searching and found an example of his work that might help illustrate my point. It's not exact, but given the enormous body of work that Byrne has produced in the past 30+ years, it's difficult to track down specific examples. In any case, by way of example, here's an undated Byrne sketch (I'd place it as the early to mid-80s) of the Fantastic Four's Invisible Woman:
As you can probably tell, it's a slow Sunday here at work, so I just thought I'd post this little observation....
Jessica Simpson, for example, is a classic Adam Hughes.
There's one artist in particular, though, whose style I most often see exemplified by real people: John Byrne.
I recently found a prime example of this phenomenon in the form of this picture of Keira Knightley:
Now, if you know Byrne's work, you'll most likely immediately see what I'm talking about: the eyebrows, the shape of her face, the slightly parted lips...all classic Byrne elements.
Of course, odds are that you aren't familiar with Byrne, so I've done some searching and found an example of his work that might help illustrate my point. It's not exact, but given the enormous body of work that Byrne has produced in the past 30+ years, it's difficult to track down specific examples. In any case, by way of example, here's an undated Byrne sketch (I'd place it as the early to mid-80s) of the Fantastic Four's Invisible Woman:
As you can probably tell, it's a slow Sunday here at work, so I just thought I'd post this little observation....
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