Night Moves

Another part of the nineties that I miss: Windows 95/98. I know, I'm a tech nerd, but these remind me of the frontier days of computing. When people like me and M would build websites by hand, and copy floppies back and forth with patches for drivers. Back when 300MHz was screaming fast, and 4GB of disk space was more than you could ever fill.

On a completely unrelated note, do you know what's better than watching Jerry Springer late night on TV? Watching the latino version. It's called José Luis: Sin Censura, and it's on channel 23 Saturday nights at 9. Right now they're advertising a DVD set called Muy Caliente para Télevision. I have no idea what they're saying, but I like all the bitchfights and sound effects. They fight like pussies, though. I'm pretty sure it's fake.

Shut the Fuck Up, Harold Ickes

You snake in the grass.

Emo User's Guide

How to generate user name; label photograph, poem, short film, or song; describe mood, feelings, or thoughts; come up with saying for either the high school yearbook or tattoo:

1. Come up with positive adjective, i.e. beautiful; gorgeous; breathtaking; graceful; magnificent

2. Come up with negative, destructive noun, i.e. destruction; desolation; extermination; eradication; obliteration

3. Put them together: gorgeous desolation; beautiful obliteration; breathtaking destruction; et. al.

Because irony makes you more insightful.

Actually...

I'm not racist, but some things at my place of work go beyond mere coincidence. Whenever I get a call about difficulty with software that we've never heard of, or assistance compiling, or basically programming UNIX, it's always an indian person. And because of our shitty phones, I can never get their usernames right. They always have the same types of names too, stuff like ndbepta (a made up example.) You know how hard it is to figure out what those letters are?

The one thing that always gets me is that when these people call in, there are two things I can always count on in the start of the call. Either, they will ignore me and not provide their username, they will interrupt me in the beginning of my introductory spiel, or they will explain their situation with "Actually..."

"Actually, I'm looking for help compiling in g++. I believe that the header files are out of date after the latest upgrade to Solaris 10 and I would like that to be fixed."

Sonofabitch.

Lunch Ramblings

- You know what would be fun? To master a Christopher Walken impression. That guy can read the phone book and people will laugh.

- I'm sick of movies like 21 Grams, and Crash. You know. The ones where there are multiple characters with intertwining stories that are united by a tragedy of some sort. Fuck that. It's a boring formula, yet I keep checking imdb and seeing more films adopting this route. You know what that tells me? That you can't sustain a couple of characters for the length of a feature. Just go and write television. That's what you want to do, anyway.

That's Enough, John Williams

Johnny,

You've been a role model, an inspiration, since I was 10. I've even got a signed picture of you chilling in a frame at home. 

But it's time to retire the scoring sheets. You haven't made a truly memorable soundtrack since 1999. Yes, I'm giving you the benefit of counting Episode I. Truthfully, though, your last best work was on Saving Private Ryan.

I can't list all the reasons, but here are a few:

1) Your Harry Potter theme sounds quite similar to your Hook theme. Listen closer.

1a) The Quidditch chase scene has PRACTICALLY the same score as the smelting factory in Episode II. Don't believe me? Watch them again.

2) AI, Minority Report, Catch Me if You Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds... all forgettable.

3) Yeah, Munich was good, but for the first time, I thought to myself "Wow, that sounds like Bear McCreary." You've reminded me of another composer now, and not the other way around. No bueno.

4) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which should have had themes and motifs as rousing as the other THREE, did not. What happened? Not even one?

I don't want to see you keep deflating like this. Don't turn into my grandma who eventually lost her mind. Quit while you're ahead.

I Miss the 90s

Remember when REM used to be cool?

And the internet was the next big thing?

And the edgiest kids dressed in plaid?

Yeah, those were the days.

In A State of Flux

I got knocked out of my groove, man.

Sunday some punk kids broke into my car and stole my XM radio and 5o cds. It's not that awful, since I can track which cds I lost/on my iPod and a new XM is only $40, but still. My chi is all fucked up or something.

I've also finished the first draft of a script I was working on. That weight has been lifted. Now I'm worrying about the next steps I need to take to revise it, make it better, make it sellable. I'm also working with my writing partner on a new scifi project, but we've both had tough weekends and so our progress is somewhat stagnant.

Then there's money issues. Not as bad I'm making them out to be, but it just never seems we get out of the hole that we dig. We like buying things.

I've gotten addicted to Civilization IV. And watching SNL sketches on hulu.com. I'm trying not to get distracted, though. I've done lots of things lately to keep my mind polished.

Diet-wise, I've cut out as many simple sugars as I can, as well as breads & pastas unless they're incidental to the meal. I've also almost wiped out all caffeine intake. The apartment is cleaned, the office has been rearranged slightly. Everything is becoming calmer.

Just not today. Which is why I'm downloading class rock songs and starting another fucking blog.

POW!