Got a Gollum thing goin'
Sunday, February 29, 2004 »
Dennis Kucinich: Now creepier than ever.
I think Laura was a little surprised when I told her I was off to the office party as I headed out the door. Little did she know it was the office LAN party, haha!!!!!
Now I just need a computer that can run UT2004.
I admit that I used to be a pretty regular reader of CNN.com. The way it manages to fit all its little news subcategories and headlines onto about a page and a half is very convenient for the short attention span. As I continued to read the site over a few weeks, though, I became unsatisfied with the relative brevity of most of the articles, as well as annoyed with the numerous typos and errors on every other page. I now think of CNN.com as more of the fast food of news sites.
What CNN.com has that never failed to amuse me, though, were the images that accompanied each article. I'm not talking about the photos of politicians or courtrooms that went along with the typical headline articles, but rather the little throwaway images that, presumably, some graphic designer over at CNN.com has to scrape together each time some less significant story goes to press. They're really nothing special, and that's what I found the most interesting. These aren't even your typical stock photos, either. Usually they're just part of some photo blown up or poorly Photoshopped over a cloudy background, often with some graphic or iconic element thrown in for good measure. For instance, when they ran an article on Jones Soda's Turkey & Gravy variety (which, as it turns out, was apparently only available around the Washington area), the image they had to go along with it was a Photoshopped Thanksgiving turkey next to a generic bottle with brown liquid in it. On top of that, they had done a very unconvincing job of editing the bottle to say "soda" on it. It was even in some ungodly font like Lucida Handwriting that no corporation would ever use. It makes me wonder how they recruit their designers, or if they just have whoever wrote the article put something together in Photoshop themselves.
Anyway, today I came across this article, and its respective image. My first thought was, wow, it sure does say "Chinese" a lot of times. Then I started thinking, how does this add to the article at all? Why even include it? I really like how whoever put this together decided to go with this futuristic motif, with the bitmap text and the Matrix-esque character flowchart, blatantly taken from Zhongwen.com. At least that aspect sort of ties in with the actual article, I GUESS. I'm not really sure what the red box is trying to accomplish, though.
Of all the crossword clues they could run on a rainy day, when the newspapers have all turned to pudding by the time anyone arrives on campus, they had to pick this one:
I was not aware that there is an official Bunchies Website.
Gamespot just posted an interview with German director Uwe Boll, the man responsible for the recent gem of a game-to-movie adaptation The House of the Dead (check out the Website!). While I couldn't tell you if the actual film came out in a positive number of theaters, if you watch the early teaser trailers I think you'll be glad you've never heard of it.
The interview, despite being a bit terse, manages to provide a heap of insight into Mr. Boll's winning movie formulae, as well as what it was like to grow up in Germany, a destitute land without such luxuries as coordinating conjunctions.
A brief list of things I'm never doing again:
Yeah, I've just about had it with those darn mountain cats.
This week's poll is courtesy of Mr. Nathan.
Some details: "Obviously the fight would have to be in a river that is deep enough for the shark to swim in, but shallow enough for the bear to wade in." I'm not sure if this is possible, but for the sake of a fair fight, let's say it is.
After lunch today I paid a visit to the Corner Store to acquire some peachy-O's. Peachy-O's are definitely the finest of all the bulk candies. The whole Trolli line of gummy fruity-O's are excellent (especially the decidedly non-O strawberry puffs), but the peachy variety is definitely the best of the bunch.
But anyway, they were all out of peachy-O's, which I don't really understand because, as I just explained, peachy-O's are the finest of all the bulk candies. But they didn't have any, so I ended up buying sour apple and watermelon fruit belts. Not even the strawberry kind, because they didn't have any of those, either. (Really, someone should get ahold of whoever does the bulk ordering.)
So, what I've been getting to is I ended up eating a bunch of these sour belts, and now my mouth is definitely paying for it. If you've ever eaten more than one of these things at a time, you know what I'm talking about. They are practically serrated.
If there's going to be rain, there'd better be rain. Like all day. And if the rain stops halfway, it had better still be cloudy. How can it go immediately from rain to sun?
There will be opportunity for redemption this weekend.
This is brought to you in almost real-time. Just your typical Friday night in IV.
Stuff I'd really like to blow money on:
Do you ever have one of those days where you learn so much that you end up not really learning anything at all?
Of course, today was the infamous "learn every room in the house" lesson, which has a similar effect in whatever language it's in. I think I was done after about a half hour.
Shamelessly stolen from Alan:
I remember those lazy days of summer when I would sit by the window and appreciate the mailman. Think about that job. Everyday you deliver the mail to unappreciative people who expect you to always be there and are angry at you for any flaws in the delivery process, no matter how unrelated to you the problem really is. You have to wade through snow and wind and rain and dogs and pissy cats and sometimes bees and wasps of all sorts and all other forms of obstacles on your way to hundreds of front doors or driveway ends. It is a hard job. It is a government job. It is your job. You are their carrier, their deliverer, their connection to the far corners of the world, at least you were until the advent of the internet. You've been replaced in some functions, by a box that does no physical labor to do the same job. The only reason you still exist is for the technologically inept and to give people these job stealing boxes which they ordered through their old box. You bring the bills for people to grumble at. You bring the jury summons. You bring the kilos of drugs unknowingly to the children. You are a dying breed of intrepid wanderer. You give people object they want, but you have to compete now with your FedExs and your UPSs and your Jet Blues who make it so easy and cheap to fly across the world to give packages full of love and hope directly to their loved ones and business partners, cutting out the middle man which is you. You have no place. We have lost the need for your traveling to our doorstep to give us things. You now have nothing to do but sit behind a desk and hand out stamps. You could go out and deliver those incoming "Dear Grandma" letters, but you know, deep inside, that Grandma is dead and poor little Jessica or Tommy or Sarah or Micheal or Zoe or Patrick will find this out the moment you deliver their letter back to them stamped return to sender. It eats at you. It eats at you until you feel helpless, trapped, disenfranchised, and totally, utterly, and completely lost. How can a postman do his or her job of finding houses and addresses when he or she is lost? Neither he nor she can. It is over. The dream of happy people with letters full of love passing from one hand into the correct hand, your hand into their smaller, more delicate palm already packed with promise and opportunity is over. The world is now a black and angry place full of hatred directed at you. you must stop the hate before it is too late, but you cannot. There is no time and nothing to implement any helpful action. Your only hope is to open those packages of promise and joy and hope for an idea, a plan, a way to stop the insanity and the pain and the torment for ever and always in everyone everywhere. Tear open those boxes. It is your only hope.This is why you do not send guns through the mail.
Last night we went to go see UCSB's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers, featuring the illustrious Bill Brown (as the swingin' Don Alhambra). I really didn't know what to expect, having never really been to an opera before, let alone a college opera. I was actually very impressed. The orchestra performed superbly, and the cast sounded amazing. I may not have been able to understand 90% of what they were saying, but it still sounded amazing.
That turned out to be a common problem, at least. After the show, both Morgan and Laura mentioned difficulty understanding all of the lines. It was very disorienting—when the gondoliers first appeared and began singing in Italian, I thought, What? Has everything been in Italian? There were definitely some words in English in the first song... right? The only performer I could consistently understand was, in fact, Bill. It must be the fact that he apparently spends around 27 hours a day singing.
The change of scenery from atop the traditional Venetian canals to Venice Beach was unexpected and allowed opportunities for a lot of surfer-related humor (although, it being a UCSB production, I have to admit I was ever-so-slightly disturbed). Also falling into the funny-yet-disturbing category is [ending revelation approaching] that the sunglasses-and-leather-clad Austrian bodyguard (another creative liberty, I'm assuming) ended up assuming the presidency of the state, and was even sworn in at a podium blatantly adorned with the Seal of California.
All in all, it was an excellent production. The only real unpleasantry was that sitting somewhere behind me was the person with the Worst Breath, and I was aware of it until the second act, for which he was fortunately absent.
I was just reading through Ms. Hilton's new book proposal over at The Smoking Gun and I am now on the brink of Xtreme vomiting. I mean, just listen to this:
While a lot of people know Paris Hilton [...] there are a lot MORE people who want to know her – or be her. After all, she has a fairly charmed, magical life – almost 23, she's beautiful, rich, sought out by the hottest guys in the world, has homes in NY and LA, has her own hit reality TV show, has had roles in lots of movies, can shop where – and whenever – she wants; is cutting an album, models on the catwalk, has a gorgeous younger sister who's her best friend - and is now emerging as a major brand name. Let's face it, she's BARBIE come to life: svelte, blonde, with perfect skin and long legs, and a wild fun fashion sense. Paris Hilton has the life that most of America's young girls and teens can only dream about."
And it just goes on and on, for 13 pages. And that's just the proposal! I shudder to think that soon enough there's going to be an entire volume of this out there. Even just 13 pages seems unnecessarily long, though, because I already know the secret to becoming fabulously rich and popular, and I can explain it in one sentence:
Start a business charging a dollar to stab Paris Hilton in the face.
I hate when I try to make some witty sarcastic comment on something someone else said but they just completely don't get it and so then I have to listen to five minutes of the most condescending explanation ever of what they were trying to say that they thought I didn't understand, but really it is they who are dumb!!!!!!
Time for a relaxing weekend.
As per usual, let's celebrating the first of the month with last month's delectable search strings:
And, last but not least:
1 This place had the absolute best smoothies before it closed down.
2 Whoever you are, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU.