Netflix Two Cents: Zombiepocalypse!!

Land of the Dead (2005)

Verdict: Romero returns with this delicious social satire a la plenty of flesh eating and intestinal munching. When the line between zombie and human is blurred, go with your gut: blow up Dennis Hopper and move to Canada.






Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Verdict: Fun and surprisingly well directed (this dude is doing Watchmen?!), but entirely inconsequential. No subtle societal critiques = not a worthwhile zombie flick.






House of the Dead(2003)

Verdict: My cousins told me this was the worst movie they had ever seen.

They were right.

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Mark, I thought you might appreciate this.

The editors of Wired magazine commissioned some of their favorite authors to write six word stories. None quite reach the brilliance of Hemmingway's quoted above, but some are quite good.



View these "concise masterpieces" with graphics or in plain text.

Harebrained scheme? Perhaps.

After years of disappointment with get-rich-quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme...and quick! --Homer Simpson

Working in the internet industry, one can't help but dabble in the precarious business of domain speculation. While there are many different ways to make money by simply owning and parking domain names, the best method, cybersquatting, is, unfortunately, illegal. If you want to try your hand at investing in domain names, these days your best bet is to pick up domains that may, some day, possess value.

I get a super good price on domain names so it's pretty easy for me to snatch them when I find one that looks even remotely appealing. But I have to admit, it's pretty damn addictive. Once you buy one domain it's difficult to fight the urge to buy more. Say, for instance, you purchase the domain retirementlocations.us. Well, what if retirementlocation.us is available? Do you buy that too? Why not, right? Fortunately I'm a bit of a Jew when it comes to spending money on things I can't hold in my hand, and despite a lapse in judgment here and there I'm pretty good at limiting myself to one domain at a time.

Once you purchase a domain there are several things you can do to increase its value. Increasing page rank and the traffic to your domain are the two biggies. If your page rank is high and you get steady traffic to your site, your domain is going to be worth some serious money. One way to build your page rank and get traffic to your domain is to park the domain with a domain parking company. Another way is to develop a website with unique content and drive traffic to the site yourself. If you know me at all, you know I've chosen the former.

It'll be interesting to see if the company I've chosen (Sedo) is able to drive any traffic to my domains. If not, it's probably my fault for choosing shitty domains. I know my domains are far from ideal, but who knows? Maybe in 10 years they'll be worth a fortune. I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time, the more you click on the links on any of my pages, the more money I earn. Depending on the link, I could earn up to $.25 per click! Get me rich, everybody!

bestinternetvalues.com
premoprices.com
online-retirement-solutions.com
your-retirement-planning.com
retirement-info.info
retirement-location.us
retirementlocations.us
baby-boom-retirement.com

Object obsolescence.

"Tell me who's to blame for the ink spot, question mark."

I get attached to things. This should not surprise you.

I stole a pen once from a Bank of America location in passive-aggressive retaliation of the absurd Balkanization of their computer systems ("What do you mean 'what state did I open the account in'? I opened it online!"). That pen, as it turns out, was a dream. I carried it with me everywhere, filling in crosswords and signing autographs. It was - dare I say it - the perfect pen.

All things must come and go and by the end of the summer, the ink well had all but dried up. In desperation, I pieced together the scrapped off logo and searched for the model online. Lo and behold, the pen was readily available, and cheaply, at any office supply chain. Naturally, I bought pens in the double digits to horde.

Yet, somehow, in such a great magnitude, the pen(s) lost their luster. Where once I lovingly held on to one, now I recklessly lost multitudes without a second thought. I pondered this as I perused the Musée de Cluny collection of Medieval artifacts -- wooden utensils passed on from generation to generation. Had the Age of Mechanical Reproduction destroyed our basic relationship with the singularity of objects?

Allow me one more example.

I own a t-shirt. There is nothing particularly special about it. It is a plain old white t-shirt, with a Middletown 350-year anniversary logo in the center. I bought it over five years ago at a pleasant time in my life. It has cheerful memories associated with it and, most importantly, I felt good wearing it.

While I have only grown more handsome (and drop-dead gorgeous) with age, my shirt, in contrast, has become dingy and tattered as shirts are wont to do. Unfortunate stains invaded the arm-pits. Random ink blots blemished its once prestine exterior. Like old-weathered paper, it started to yellow. It had gone from a treasure to an article of clothing girlfriends were embarrassed to be seen with.

I was sorting through my old clothing the other day, when I stumbled upon my Middletown t-shirt. I bemoaned its tragic unwearableness. Nothing could be done.

Or was there?

After some brainstorming and hypothesizing, I pulled out my digital camera, took a snapshot of the shirt, brushed up the logo on Photoshop, and then submitted that image to CafePress (a sort of do-it-yourself merchandise retailer). A couple of weeks later, I received a perfect replica of my old t-shirt in immaculate condition -- just like the day I bought it.




In fact, this new process has opened up the possibility of recreating the shirt endlessly. Suddenly, the shirt has somehow become emotionally devalued; that its new infiniteness has made it, well, less special.

Has the Age of Digital Reproduction destroyed our basic relationship with the situatedness of objects?

Identity Slippage and The Departed

The Departed is brilliant. You don't need me to tell you that.

What you won't be reading in the reviews, however, is how clever the script truly is -- in the sinister ways it embeds its deconstructive textual cues in the most flippant of dialogue.

Allow me to elaborate. Here is a scene:

At a golf driving range, Ellerby (Alec Baldwin) grills Sullivan (Matt Damon), probing him for personal information and testing his fiber against his immaculate record as a police officer. There is a certain amount of narrative tension. Baldwin plays the head of Sullivan's agency at the Massachusetts State Police force and Damon - don't worry, I am not spoiling anything that isn't clear within the first five minutes of the film - plays an undercover mole rooting out informants for Irish mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). When Sullivan admits that he is engaged, Ellerby approves:

"Marriage is an important part of getting ahead. It lets people know you're not a homo. A married guy seems more stable. People see the ring, they think 'at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch.' Ladies see the ring, they know immediately that you must have some cash, and your cock must work."

The movie thus expands beyond merely a cat and mouse game between undercover cops and robbers, to the ways we use cultural referents to masquerade a stable self and hide our schizophrenic identities from others -- of symbolic interactionism and cultural hermeneutics in replacement of the intellectual bankruptcy of Freudianism and psychology (and you thought that first date dinner conversation about Freud and the Irish was just being cute). A wedding band is not representative of a union of love, or even symbolic of some psychosexual semiotics, but instead a marker of social positioning and identity.

Somebody could write a convincing dissertation that the characters' obsession with discovering "rats" amidst their ranks is about the rampant fear of homophobia and being outed in male dominated occupations (think about the conversation about 'how you know if someone is a rat') -- a thesis which would be well substantiated with Sullivan's erectile dysfunction (and his constant sexual slurs) and the thematic linkage to pederasty in the Catholic clergy (and you wondered why the movie ended with the image conflation of the 'rat' with the 'church').

The Departed is the best kind of movie: a sharply entertaining film that stands on its own, with an absolutely beguiling subtext that unravels the narrative days after you leave the theater.

Television FTW

I’ll go against the rest of the world and say this: there are more great shows on TV right now than I can remember at any point in lifetime.

The Office: I’m continually amazed at the superb writing, crackling acting and deadpan brilliance that is the American version of The Office.

This season, I’ve watched every episode of The Office at least four times. Some –– like the “Grief Counseling” episode and the season premiere, “Gay Witch Hunt” –– more. I can’t describe how amazing it is to be able to watch and shows that many times... and in a relatively short amount of time.

I like how simply and elegantly the characters interact within these somewhat over the top situation. The foil that is the Stamford branch, which seemingly has its act together but is just as poorly run as any office anywhere. (Though still perhaps less so than the Scranton branch.) And the way that the Pam-Jim storyline can remain a focus of the show... even though it’s rarely mentioned.

At this point anyone who isn’t watching the show still makes comparisons to the British version of the show should see a doctor –– as they must be suffering from some sort of disorder of the brain and sense of humor.

My only complaint with The Office is that mindless drivel like Grey’s Anatomy and CSI continue to get better ratings. For shame America, for shame.

Heroes: Around the time that the cheerleader was almost raped, fell head first on a sharp wooden stick, only to wake half formed on the autopsy table I realized I’d be watching every episode of this series. Incidentally I must not be alone. The ratings have been solid, and the show has already received a full-season episode order. (For those of you who don’t know, that means that Heroes is safe until next May and, baring any large mid-season ratings drop, is likely to return next year, too.)

I think what impresses me most about the show is that it has opened up what appears to be a comprehensive mythology, that doesn’t feel daunting. You feel like you learn something new and feel fulfilled every week. So unlike Lost, which just piles on new characters and questions, Heroes feels like it’s moving somewhere specific. For now.

My Name Is Earl: I was worried for the first two weeks of the season. It seemed like Earl was trying too hard to pay attention to the loveable minor characters, and not paying enough attention to the list. That’s a problem when it’s so clear that the list is what makes the show work. Fortunately, this has been remedied in the last few episodes. Although I’ll never have the dedication to Earl as I do to The Office, I’ll still take the time to watch it every week. I mean, come on, how many other shows have the same level of wry social and political commentary, a truly multi-cultural cas t and a Mexican Executive Producer?

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: At the bottom of my list for sure. It may not be great. It’s self-important, melodramatic and kind of dumb. But some of the characters are extremely likeable. (Namely Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, D.L. Hughley, Nathan Corddry and Carlos Jacott.) And the show is mostly watchable. I might not be excited to watch it every week like with The Office and Heroes. But I’m still watching. For now.

Mark

Three up, two down.

Final verdict on our Fall 06' Freshmen class:

Heroes / The show keeps getting better, and I am loving the shameless homages, like Hiro and friend aping Rain Man. Tonally varied, but still manages to hang together.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip / Ever met one of those people that always talks about how hilarious they are, yet never makes you crack a smile? Show, don't tell.

30 Rock / Quirky, funny, and never takes itself seriously -- the antithesis of Studio 60 self-righteousness. Alec Baldwin is a comedic god.

The Nine / All things considered, the pilot was pretty good, but it failed to answer the single most pressing question: why should I care?

Dexter / Michael C. Hall is the greatest television actor, well, ever. (Although truth be told, the show is a bit gory for my tastes!)

Vote!

Tonight I read through the 166 page book outlining the Oregon General Election ballet initiatives. November 7 is the day to vote and I used this spiffy tool made by the fine folks at IndyVoter.org to create a voter guide based on what I read.

Mine was the first one done for Oregon... Y'all should make them, too.

Nostalgiarama Daleth

More photos recently released from the Soviet Archives...




A relic from the days when you could wait in Airport terminals. As you can see, I am still 10 years away from puberty and Ben is deep in an emo coma.


Nod ya head! Black suits comin'.

Dry Drunk Emperor

I, for one, have no desire in making this a political blog. But, with midterm elections on the horizon, I thought it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and relive how our president spent his "political capital" over the past two years. And I am not even going to discuss Iraq, which has been called "the biggest corruption scandal in history."

• On December 26, 2004, a massive tsunami struck the northern coast of Sumatra, killing over 150,000. For three days, our president did not comment publicly on the disaster. Four months later when a Florida state circuit judge ruled that Michael Schiavo could remove his wife's feeding tube, Bush cut short his vacation for the first time ever to sign a bill moving jurisdiction of the case to federal courts. This was after all "a great political issue." Oh, and who can forget the good doctor, Bill Frist, who claimed on the senate floor, "I have looked at the video footage. Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond." Or Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan who compared "the pull-the-tube people" with Nazis. Way to go! Use those internet message board analogies! Let's not forget Bill Bennett who argued his way out of of that Republican pro-family foxhole by claiming that the Schiavo's had a bad marriage. Classy! And this farce would not be complete without a little bit of that good ole fashioned hypocrisy that only DeLay can pull off: in 1988, DeLay, along with his family, decided not to prolong the life of his father who had been severely injured in a driving accident.
  
  
• Speaking of DeLay, let's not forget his support of Saipan, an island that became a U.S. Commonwealth in 1986, but still somehow evades those terrible labor standards and immigration laws that make America so unfriendly to business. Minimum wage: $3.05! This, by the way, is how your favorite "Made in America" clothing manufactures get away with sweatshop labor. The 20/20 expose on the island revealed the unbearable working conditions, the coercive sexual labor, and the forced abortions. In 1997, DeLay claimed the island was "a shining light for what is happening in the Republican party." Of course what do you expect from a man whose best friend, Jack Abramoff, once said of the Saginaw Chippewa: "These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure." Kudos boys!
  
  
• Only one thing needs to be said about the Social Security reform fiasco: in order to reach the $11 trillion dollar of unfunded liability statistic the administration kept harping upon, one would have to extend the longevity of each recipient to 150 years and keep the retirement age at 67. Talk about reading the Bible litereally! But that is not even the best part! The $11 trillion dollar figure reflected the Social Security shortfall, adjusted for inflation, from now to infinity. To infinity!
  
  
• Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, about Katrina: "I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw the headlines: 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.'" Nuff said.
  
  
• Cheney shot a guy in the face. With a shotgun.
  
  
• The National Debt has increased an average of $1.63 billion per day since September 30, 2005. That is one YouTube a day! Get those karaoke videos churning boys! We have to save the economy.
  
  
• And this is cheating because it came out in a New York Times article months before the election, but it is a personal favorite of mine:
  
  "In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
  
  The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

I'll stop there because I am sure you can find better resources than me on the web.

Here is to 2007, and beyond!

Free domains, anyone?

I'm getting pretty damn good with Gimp, if I do say so myself.

An era, an end...

I joined in August 2003, already more than three years ago. But, like graduate school, it’s time to quit Friendster now, too.

Before today, I hadn’t logged on in months.

The last comment someone left for me is about two years old.

Even Logan’s once mighty friend list has shrunk to a mere 106 names.

The last time I actually was excited to log on was just after Rachel and I were officially dating. I couldn’t wait to change my profile so it said “In A Relationship.” That was more than a year ago.

And quite frankly this blog is far better for staying in touch than Friendster ever was.

Mark

All my photos are in Janet's basement...

Picture Death

And what? More pictures you say?

This is our cat Hildegard (of Hildegard Von Bingen) with a catnip rainbow.

Sammy G, doing his best Bobby D.

(And Mark, I will take these down if you don't want the blog to spiral into picture death. Also, a little hometown present from Googletube or whatever it's called these days.)

The one time Logan wished he were a long-haired girl

Revelation Part 2

Two weeks ago, after I got back from my mom's wedding in Kauaii, I started working on a farm on Sauvie Island (arguably an extreme response to my dislike of my old job). The island is located about 30 minutes outside of Portland, between the Columbia River (before the Willamette river breaks off) and what is called the Multnomah Channel. The farm, where I will be working for the next month, has always been one of my favorite places around Portland to drive to on weekends and it was a pretty amazing coincidence that they needed people for the month of October. Two weekends ago, I made probably 60 carmel apples and sold roasted corn. This past weekend, I sold people kuri, buttercup and butternut, delicato, and acorn squash, corn, shell beans and romano beans, pickling cucumbers, kraut cabbage, gave people maps to a six acre corn maze, weighed pumpkins from a giant pumpkin patch, and watched a zydeco band play at the Saturday night Hoe Down and bonfire. Every day, one of the hispanic employees whistles and sings in Spanish while stocking veggies. I work with a baker, a writer, a librarian, and a girl in nursing school (not, as I am more familiar, just folks who are somewhat entrenched in a law enforcement mentality).

And at sunset after a rainy afternoon, looking out on rows of cosmos and zinnias out the market's warehouse door, I realized I hadn't felt like myself for a very long time.

Leaving my old job was definitely an anxiety producing experience. I was leaving a job where I was getting paid close to 40 grand a year, had great insurance, had respect from judges and other folks in the community, and had the references and experience to create a very strong application to law school. And on top of that, I was leaving it for nothing. At that point I had no other job, no other specific plans, nothing at all. It wasn't that I was running from an anxiety producing experience (because the alternative was an environment with a different form of anxiety). How was I going to pay rent? Was I making the right choice or was I sacrificing too much just because of insecurity with my previous decision?

Yesterday, an Assistant District Attorney who I knew from when I clerked at the Juvenile Court showed up at the farm with his girlfriend. He said he had recently quit his job because it was effecting his personal life in a very negative way. He said he was looking for another job, and while he was looking for another job, he was enjoying his time off. Later, he and his girlfriend say happily on the back of a hayride, sitting in the sun, in sweatshirts and jeans (he'd always looked just a little bit awkward in his dark blue suits and pastel pink and blue ties). He did not seem surprised to see me there.

Maybe none of that was a sign, but it served as a good reminder. I can't really imagine living a life where I'm inside shuffling papers all day, participating in some assembly line where misbehaving people are processed through a system that is so dependent on other parts of the system working effectively that any changes are dependent on changes in the other giant systems (making the likelihood for change within the system fairly unlikely--or at least frustratingly slow).

I don't think it was/is fear of stress that has made me reconsider the law school plan. Or a lack of an acquaintance with my anxiety (although I do not claim that I fully understand it). There's no doubt in mind that my old job (and the environment at my old job) was stressful--and stressful in a way that was unhealthy. But I also know that I am basically anxious all of the time--whether it be because I'm holding together the daily actions of a domestic violence court, or because I have to figure out how to ring up 10 pumpkins as quickly as possible so the next 5 people in line don't get grumpy. The "bull shit cognitive-dissonance-like force" will always move in to replace the bigger stressors I've managed to escape. So the choice is, like Ben said, less about stress/anxiety, and more about figuring out the best way to pursue "bigger and better things".

I think I know that if I did make the choice to go to law school, I would be able to do fine. I am not afraid of my ability to hang in that world. But right now, that choice would be more a way to address the doldrums/lack of direction that comes with being in your mid-twenties than the most effective way for me to accomplish "bigger and better things". It's kinda weird that, for me, law school may in fact be the easy route. But I think I know now that the simplicity of the choice does not mean it's the right one.

So, Goldsmith, law school may be your destiny and I will definitely do what I can to help you along the way. But I'm not ready to call it mine. And you and anxiety ain't going to talk me into it... At least not just yet.

Backin' it up

I've begun the arduous task of uploading my more than 10 gigs of photos to my Flickr account. I have photos that date back to 2000, so while many of the photos will mean nothing to you there is sure to be something you’ll facny.

Here’s a taste:

Revelation

Maybe this is obvious to everyone but me, but I realized something as I lay awake in bed (stressed as balls) last night. When I left PETA I assumed that my anxiety level would drop in direct proportion to my stress level. I also assumed that my stress level and my work load had a causational relationship. In other words, I assumed that my work load and the type of work I was doing caused my unmanageably high level of anxiety. Not so, as it turns out; the relationship was one of correlation, not causation.

Stress and anxiety are internal forces which are often only related to our environments incidentally. While environmental factors are often the catalyst of our anxiety/depression/stress/etc., the root cause has more to do with our subjective perceptions of self as we interact with our surroundings and live our lives. Those of us who feel compelled to perpetually strive for bigger and better things will always struggle with the anxiety caused by the subjects of our respective pursuits. The real bitch is that, even when we aren’t striving for anything other than relief, this bull shit cognitive-dissonance-like force moves in to replace the sloughed off stressors we’d managed to escape and we soon find other environmental/situational issues to catalyze the same old feelings. All the while we lose sight of the real problem and remain preoccupied with finding something external on which we can blame our inner conflict. Sounds dismal, huh? Well, maybe not…

The upshot is this: If we strive to become acquainted with the nature of our stress/anxiety/depression/etc. we will be increasingly less likely to allow our lives to be affected by it/them. If we begin to look at our respective situations with these omnipresent feelings in mind, we will make better choices. For example, I shouldn’t avoid heavy work loads out of the fear that I won’t be able to cope with the subsequent stress. The stress will be there anyway. When I find myself stressed out or anxious, I shouldn’t waste time and energy scouring my environment for stressors and nuisances. I should instead focus on doing what needs to be done to get where I want to go. Plus, when determining where it is that I want to go, it would be foolish to allow the misdiagnosis of my current environment to come into play. In other words, I shouldn’t run from a situation which appears to be making me anxious since the anxiety will surely follow.

My conclusion: I’m applying to law school, and I think Tessman should too.

Thoughts on the Lost episode “A Tale of Two Cities”

Just what Lost needed... more characters. And is there anyway that less could have happened in a one hour episode?

I don’t think I have time for this anymore...

If design govern in a thing so small.

It was such a small gesture.

She knew he enjoyed watching Premier League football; she also knew how little he retained. With shears she devotedly clipped the advertisement from among the personals and placed it knowingly in her purse.

A reminder that one can love so simply, and completely.

More shit about Studio 60...

Despite my assertion that I wouldn't watch the show –– I have. And I completely agree with Logan. Except I think you missed some important points.

6) It is remarkable (beyond what Logan said about the featured sketches) that overall Studio 60 is remarkably humorless for a show about comedy. Somewhere along the line Sorkin missed the fact that conversations about writing jokes aren’t as funny as jokes.

7) While it is true that conversations held in its hallways of the Whitehouse arguably affect every person on Earth, the same is not true of a weekly sketch comedy. No matter how politically relevant or intellectual challenging a show is, fewer than 1 in 30 Americans will watch in a given week.

8) It is possible to have a Christian character that isn’t a symbolic opposite of the supposed Jewish/Intellectual/Queer/Liberal Hollywood core.

9) It is possible to make a show that is not about making a show and to write a show that isn’t about writing a show.

Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset

Nell is not going to like this, but I have decided I intensely dislike Studio 60.

It took me a couple of episodes to fully articulate my problems with the show -- mostly because Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford are so likable. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the rest of the cast.

Some complaints, in an easily digestible bullet format:

1) It is impossible for me to care about a character's ethical dilemma if it is predicated on the necessity of him sending his two kids to private school.

2) It is impossible for me to relate to/empathaize with characters when their banter revolves around which is worse: a cocaine addiction or a DUI.

3) It is impossible to for me to suspend my disbelief in the reality of this show if the skits suck.

4) It is possible to have a Christian character in a Sorkin show not mention their religion every sentence?

5) Finally, is it possible that three episodes in we could have a clear(er) idea of the relationships between the characters? I still have no clue who Steven Weber is or why Amanda Peet's job hangs on the precarious success of this single show.

Apparently I am not alone; the show has already lost 4.5 million viewers in the past two weeks.

NBC is in a world of hurt.

[Although I should add that Mark is totally right about Heroes. I think it is fair to say the show is safe for the time being -- let's see where the narrative takes us from here.]

Schadenfreude

He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus
But he talks like a gentleman
Like you imagine when you were young

Bring the pain.