Molly in Rare Form

Thank you, Ms. Ivins.

Check her out here.

Note to Movies

RE: The joke where the man accidentally drinks the breast-milk in the fridge.

Dear movies,

Sometimes there will be a movie where a new baby is involved, and the man opens the fridge and drinks right from a small container of milk. But guess what? It's breast-milk, you dope! And the girl says "that's breast milk," and then the man spits it out. Ha! What a dope!

Seriously, this joke has had a good run and we've all enjoyed hours of laughter at it in more movies than I can recall right now. But well... I think you see where I'm going with this. I think it's time to let it go.

Just... let it go.

Your friend,

Chris

The Dark Side

Brace yourself: apparently there are some who believe that this war we're in got started in a pretty shady way by some of OUR people.

!

Right? I mean, come on! Somebody oughta sell tickets to this thing!

PBS has an excellent documentary they just aired on Frontline on this exact subject on their site right now.

The show is available in its entirety online here: The Dark Side. Very good run-down of the affair, especially if you have trouble remembering the timelines and characters.

My Addendum to Whatever Rules of Web Design Are Already Out There

Somewhere out there on the WWW there are some rules of etiquette and good design for web pages, I'm sure, but in case these points are not included, let me present them now.

1. NO POPUPS.

   Why would I even have to say that? Why would I even have to say to a web designer, 'When I am perusing your site deciding whether or not I shall engage in commerce with you (as opposed to the dozens of other vendors who probably provide much the same product), try not to throw something annoying at my eyes!'

   Do the people at McDonalds come out and throw coupons at my head while I'm eating? Do the people at Borders snatch a book out of my hand and replace it with a flyer advertising other books? No. And you know why? Because they're not insane. NO POPUPS.

   OLD LADIES OF THE WORLD: Stop clicking on these popups. You're the only possible reason these would continue to be used. I know you just got the computer, and you just got on the Internets, but stop clicking on just anything that appears on your screen.

   And while you're at it, stop responding to spam and junk mail. You are the cause of all the junk on the internet. YES, YOU.

   And the rule still applies to these fancier "embedded" popups, the ones that emerge once I'm on a page, spreading out over everything and then I have to search for the X button to close them. I see them on even the A+ sites that should know better. Popups are almost as annoying as

2. SITES THAT AUTOMATICALLY PLAY SOUNDS WHEN I LOAD THE PAGE.

   What? What? WHAT? You mean I have to TELL someone that I don't want to automatically hear a MIDI version of Bon Jovi's SHOT THRU THE HEART the second the page loads?

   Why would it even occur to you, as an innovator of web browser plug-ins, to give someone this option? After that improbability, why would it even occur to you as an amateur designer of your MySpace page that an unsolicited song, probably revealing me at work to be SURFING ON COMPANY TIME, would be welcome? Nothing makes me leave a page quicker than a song starting up unbidden.

   WHY. It doesn't make sense.

3. LINKING TO PDFs FOR NO REASON.

   Online businesses, we are ALL very impressed with your marketing materials. And truly the Portable Document Format is one of the greatest things in the world since puppies.

   But nothing irritates me more than clicking on a link, only to see that now Adobe Acrobat is starting up because you've used one of your company's precious .PDFs instead of just making a page. People - there is no reason to put PDFs on your website unless you are offering materials for download / later printing. It's lazy.

New Inventions in Logic

Logic Experts of the future will be grateful when they dig up the works of Ann Coulter, especially her latest one, because they will have found one of the fabled Weapons of Mass Distraction that nearly destroyed our society back in Aught Six or Seven: some sort of self-referencing, recursive, anti-rational logical loop that defies reason itself.

To sum up what I have heard her say about her latest book, and no, I have not read it, I've merely listened to her own descriptions on about five talk shows, which surely should count, the Coulterian Logic goes more or less like this: I think it is wrong that I am not allowed to insult these harpies that rejoice in their husbands' deaths, just because the attention-seeking whores are 9/11 widows.

I'd say we were through the looking-glass here, but since it's Coulter I should point out that it's also at least our 8th or 9th trip. If these future Logic Archeologists are smart they will put her books right back in the ground where they found them and then cover them with giant spikes.

Coulter, whose statements you might be able to distinguish from that of Adolf Hitler's by taking this quiz, has created quite a little cottage industry for herself in bile, and perhaps the lesson we should take from her is not one on rights of expression, but entrepreneurial spirit. She saw a resource (hate, ignorance), and she used it to fill a need for impulse-buy books. Who can say she has not earned her royalty checks?

Things related and not

Some randomry for a busy Wednesday:

Fun ad campaign: http://www.idont.com/ Because people that buy iPods are such conforming sheep!

When you get past all the graphics and 'tude, it turns out they're hawking the "Sansa e200" - a competing MP3 player. And one that sports a rather familiar design. BUT IN BLACK! IN BLACK! Anyway this thing MUST be great because the style of the site is like, spray-painted, man! Don't you get it?

Prairie Home Companion

I can see the temptation in creating a backstory and a framing device for the film version of Prairie Home Companion, but it was a poor choice, and made for a boring film. Amazing, considering the people involved. Keillor's long-running show, an American treasure, is vastly more interesting as is than any invented characters and backstage melodrama.

I found myself just wishing that Robert Altman had turned his restless camera on an actual performance of P.H.C. and made a documentary. The parts that were interesting were the parts with Keillor front and center behind his podium, doing his show - and that was it.

I wish that Altman and everyone had been a bit more honest in their approach. If the desire was to do an ALL-STAR Prairie Home Companion, with a lot of big name actors joining Keillor onstage, then I wish they had simply done that. For as much as I admire and love Meryl Streep, Kevin Klein, and wonderful / fantastic / great Lily Tomlin, I'd have preferred them just playing themselves - or slight variations of themselves as Keillor does - than have them in "roles."

I felt sad that Virginia Madsen's "Altman Experience" had to be in this role. I felt sad for ALL the first-time Altman players doing their best, like Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly - but not Tommy Lee Jones. This was one of Jones' Fast n' Clipped roles, the ones where he steps slightly on the other actor's lines with a flat delivery, as if he's literally trying to rush individual moments so he can get through this hell and on a plane as fast as possible, away from this production he is only doing as a big, big favor to someone. Too bad. The man can bring it when he wants to.

I found myself wondering what someone like Jonathan Demme - a man who knows how to turn live performances into movies - would have done with Prairie Home Companion. With greatest respect to the grand old man of movies, and to Garrison Keillor, I must suggest that you not see this movie, but instead rent "Gosford Park" again, or "M*A*S*H" - and tune in Saturday evening for Keillor's radio show.

Yesterday's Post If I Hadn't Been Too Busy

Query: How much cologne would a construction worker have to be wearing for me, one lot away to the south and two stories up, to get a huge waft of it through my window, an amount so great that it actually left an after-taste?

Assume a prevailing southerly wind.

Let's also bear in mind that the building under construction one lot over is actually three stories high, so the perfumed worker in question was possibly more or less at my same altitude at the time of the transferring breeze.

Posit: Well, the bottom line is, we can't know. All we can do is surmise the amount. And I, like you, have come to the conclusion that this man applied the cologne rather liberally on this day.

Or perhaps "apply" is not the word anymore when we are talking these amounts. Perhaps "coat" or "varnish" is a more appropriate term. "Imbue" comes to mind.

I believe, and this is just conjecture, but my belief is that for me to be able to get a goodly cloud of it in the mouth at a distance of one standard lot + one story, that this gentleman has created a noxious, eye-watering stink cloud around himself that probably acts as a buffer between him and all life, and has undoubtedly, at minimum, earned himself the Spanish equivalent of the nickname "Captain Cologne" amongst his construction colleagues.

If called upon to identify him by sight alone I would look for the man who works in solitude, far away from the others.

Interpolating, I feel we could probably match this Perfumed Worker up with a probable set of home decor themes, fancifully-altered car horn sounds, and a fairly accurate list of phrases he'd be likely to yell at a passing aye chihuahua mamasita, along with other demographic features, based on the cologne usage.

Perhaps in his world he has created a veritable vortex of attraction, though. Surely there are those that could not possibly fight their way through the barrier of cologne-saturated air molecules without a HazMat suit, but if you're the kind of person for whom this "does it," then I'd guess at these levels you'd be powerless against him - even at a range of 30 feet or more.

Lingo Bingo

Today I was called upon to give the updates for my team on the 6 AM call. I decided to spice it up amongst my few teammates by starting a game of Lingo Bingo.

The rules were, during my update I would use all of the following bits of corporate-speak... except for one:

LEVERAGE
REACH OUT
MITIGATE
TRACKING ON...
TAKE OFFLINE
STEADY STATE
CHECKPOINT

The first of the teammates to IM me after the update with the correct missing word or phrase would then receive a free lunch on me.

(The correct answer was LEVERAGE. Congratulations, Vijay.)

An Inconvenient Truth

I have been thinking about how to present my thoughts on this movie all day. Because I really, really hope that as many people see this movie as possible, and if I could convince you to go, then how great would that be.

Like all controversial movies, no doubt you've already been exposed to some of the information and disinformation swirling around it, and maybe it's swayed you one way or another.

Tell you what - put that aside and go check out what it actually says.

If you are a Republican and do not care for Al Gore, I hope you are still interested enough in the subject matter - preserving life on this planet - to go and see it. Even if you go and see it only out of a desire to refute everything in it - I hope you see it.

If you are a Democrat and feel betrayed by Gore - maybe you feel he betrayed us by not demanding justice and a recount in 2000, or maybe you think this is naked propaganda in support of another election campaign - well, I hope you see it anyway.

Or maybe you're somewhere in between (or outside) these two parties, and simply do not want to go and see a depressing movie about how we're all doomed to live a Waterworld existence in fifty years because of the greenhouse effect, fighting for gallons of gas so that we can work as soldiers in Dennis Hopper's Jet Ski army, or else live like slaves on some man-made island of corrugated tin, at least until Kevin Costner can liberate us.

Well - I can tell you that the movie DID terrify me as it promised it would. But it also left me with a definite set of things I could personally do to avoid all that, and a feeling of purpose and hope.

If you are sick to death of politics, I hope you believe me when I say that the movie is not very preoccupied with that, except in areas where, well, frankly, it becomes impossible not to note how politics have influenced the issue.

The movie is not the best documentary I have ever seen, but I guess it might be the most important.

Here's the last thing I'll say about it, and then I'll turn it over to a better writer: I think it's an important movie, and it made me want to be a better, more mindful person.

The Omen (2006)

Unfortunately this movie is not an update or a reinterpretation of the weak original, but a faithful reproduction. There's still all this running around to various ancient churches and graveyards, and switching babies, and the Devil knocking off the two or three people that have suspected his infernal plan by hanging, impaling, and decapitation. It was just too tempting NOT to do a remake and release it on 6/6/06, I suppose.

I guess when I heard it was being remade, I didn't have high expectations, but I WAS hoping they'd shed a bit more light on this jackal business. I still don't quite understand why they bothered to bury not only the jackal itself, but also the murdered Thorne baby. It just seems like some pretty damning (ha) evidence to keep around. Particularly since they obviously took pains to not so much hide as highlight the baby's massive head wound for anyone that may some day come a-diggin'.

The movie has a great cast but there was not much point to a remake, except to capitalize on 6/6/06. And on top of that I have to say, my capacity for Revelations dread and horror of big black dogs is not quite what it was when I was a kid.

And is it glib to posit that perhaps a horror film about the Anti-Christ positioning to take over the White House and plunge the world into a period of darkness seems a little quaint these days? It kind of feels like that bird has flown.

What to wear?

From Bob Harris at This Modern World:

It's only 7:30 AM here, but Bob gets Best Post Award for the day.

Where the commentary is above average

Thank you, Garrison Keillor, for this:

Also thank you for "large shambling galoot." HA!

X-Men: The Last Stand

Professor X having installed a psychic partition in Jean Gray's mind seems like a pretty big piece of information to just toss out during a scene a half hour into this movie. Did I missed something about this in the other two movies? I am familiar with the "Jean Gray's Powers Are Just Really, REALLY Huge, and That's Getting To Be a Problem" storyline from the comics, but in the context of the films, it seems a little out of nowhere that she suddenly becomes Dark Phoenix and then suddenly hates Xavier.

Xavier's "death" seemed a bit unceremonious for such a major character. When someone like Professor X dies we need bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace" with the orchestra joining in as they shoot his coffin out of the ship, we need momentous crowds at funerals, we need hundreds of mutants crying.

Of course that was nothing compared to the short shrift of Cyclops' last scene. Did James Marsden ask for too much money? They couldn't have whisked him out of the story any faster with a giant crooked cane from backstage. The character deserved better. He didn't even get the dignity of an agonizing mournful cry of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" from Wolverine. Logan mentions that he "thinks" Scott may be dead at one point and that's it? Thanks a LOT.

Mystique, one of my favorite villains, also had a rushed departure. And too bad Angel had nothing to do with the plot. I enjoyed this movie but it made me want to see Bryan Singer's take on Superman all the more.

The Straw Men Are Revolting

... but luckily Lileks is there to quash the discord. And even more luckily, Retardo at "Sadly, No" provides color commentary so we don't have to spend any time in the Lilekian Bubble ourselves:

The internet is good.