The latest bill that Hollywood is pushing through Congress would, if they suspect you of piracy, allow them to hack your system, disable your file sharing, and delete things they don’t like.
Oh, and if they delete the wrong stuff or break something else on your machine, you probably can’t sue.
So, I’m thinking that next time Hollywood lobbyists do something I don’t like, I should have the right to break into their house and smash stuff up for a while. Seems only fair.
What Movie Symbolism Are You?
“You are a recurring ‘doves’ theme. You’re Mission: Impossible – 2; on the up-side, you’re kind of spiritual. On the down-side, everyone thinks you’re overdramatic and pretentious.
what movie symbolism are you? find out!”
An un-seen episode of “The Prisoner”
I am psychically unwell this morning… no, I don’t mean I’m receiving bad telepathy, I mean I am in a state of mental unbalance. Like my consciousness spent too much time on a ride at the Salem Fair.
Rough dreams last night… the first one directly influenced by the TV Rain was watching last night. I dreamed I was Sarah Jessica Parker’s character on Sex and the City, pregnant, and being chased by government agents who wanted the Pelican Brief. (oookaaayyy…)
After the agents were stopped, they handed me my baby, and I broke down and cried. Just bawled. The only reason that’s pertinent is that, when I woke up, I felt emotionally like I really had cried, for a good long time… just wrung out and clouded.
But the dreams didn’t end there… I dreamed that I woke up – everything in the dream became hyper-clear. I got up, and went to the window in another room that overlooks the residential road. It seemed to be around 3 or 4 am. An 18-wheeler with way too many running lights drove by at a casual pace… there was a burst of golden sparks, like fireworks. When they cleared, the street was empty… until a light blue, t-shaped, levitating object bigger than a car cruised by just as casually. I left the window, convinced that I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to have seen, and I was going to regret it shortly… it wouldn’t be a friendly Will Smith coming to neuralize me, oh no.
So when I finally woke up for real, I felt wrung out, clouded, paranoid and worried.
Good way to start the day, huh?
I cannt tyype…
I meant to say that MiB 2 was not as good as the first one.
Also, I’m glad that I’ll finally get to play Voyager: Elite Force holomatch with Rain. Of course, she’ll find her groove in about a game and a half and start kicking my butt, but at least I can spawn a cube’s worth of Borg to help out if it starts getting too humiliating.
So, like, I had a long post almost ready yesterday… but I had to slot a Zip disk to check a reference. I should know better. The Zip driver for OS X crashes the desktop every time (no big deal, the process restarts automatically)… but this time it locked up the whole machine, I had to do a hardware restart. Lost my post, and just wasn’t up to re-typing it.
Anyway.
Figured out the last problem I was having with the special effect for my friend’s wedding video. Rain wants me to change the timing slightly, but that will just be an evening’s work. I’m learning a lot – maybe I can be meiran and raininva‘s special-effects tech when they are famous moviemakers.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein is very hard in single-player. Hey, game designers – some of us don’t play Quake 3 Arena 40 hours a week. The easy setting is supposed to be… easy.
Yes, I enjoyed MiB 2… no, it was as good as the first one.
Got the final “Robotech: Macross” boxed set this weekend, thanks to Rain. It even has the “Robotech: Sentinels” pilot as an extra – a film that made Macross purists howl. Only four more boxed sets to go before I have the whole Robotech series… then I can get the UFO set… then Monty Python’s FC… then Thunderbirds… what do you mean they’re already released ST:TNG third season?
MPEG-2 is going to be very expensive to me, I can see that.
Ooops… my boss’ laptop is throwing a kernel panic… won’t boot off the hard drive or the CD. This oughta be fun…
The more things change…
This train of thought began as I watched Adobe Photoshop go through a complicated scripting sequence without any assistance from me… I began thinking of Rick Deckard’s wonderful photo-processing “Esper” machine. (Yes, I want one.)
So, I’m thinking about Blade Runner and the fact that, in an unscientific poll of science-fiction fans, I’m one of the few viewers who prefer the theatrical release to the director’s cut. (Voiceover, less uncertain ending, and all).
I’m not going to debate the merits of the two versions here, though it has occurred to me that it is the theatrical release that made Blade Runner one of the classics of SF film (and made it possible to produce a director’s cut release, before DVDs made such releases common).
However, the discussion of the versions made me think about how we revise things in our heads. I watched hours of the old Robotech series last weekend, but used the remote to skip over the dull, boring, or actually painful parts. (Yes, I’m referring to Minmei.) The Internet produced the “Phantom Edit” version of Star Wars Episode I – in many opinions, a superior film. Douglas Adams himself wrote multiple variants of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – all official, and all contradictory.
Then, while looking up information on Apple’s “Final Cut Pro”, I found this web page that compares such revisions to the Bible itself, where the Gospels contradict each other and concentrate on the parts that the individual writers found interesting. And I realized that people have been arguing about this for nearly two thousand years.
So, the next time I go to a con and find an earnest discussion of how Enterprise has re-written the established history of the Star Trek universe, I’ll be less likely to jump in with both feet. If we’ve been revising our most sacred texts to personal taste for this long, Kirk and Picard don’t have much of a chance. *grin*
Notes from a weekend
Rain and I finally joined a gym. I think that the benefits of the place, for me, are 1) an air-conditioned, level track to do laps on and 2) a whirlpool jacuzzis to relax in afterwards. I might look into some of the classes too, but thanks to my Borg parts I need to avoid unnaturally repetitive motion and shocks to my hip. So a lot of the exercise equipment is out, and I probably won’t be doing jump-rope or step aerobics. 🙂 That’s okay; the only things I’m really looking for right now are more stamina for walking / hiking and a smaller waistband.
Went ahead and got “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” this weekend. Pretty game… would probably look better if I had the processor and video card that the game lists as “minimum requirements”. That’s okay, proper frame-rate is for the weak and helpless *grin*
Got a lot done on a “Star Wars” opening for Sean and Leisa’s wedding video this weekend. I think they’ll plotz when they see it. Hopefully, I can finish it tonight so we can get back to the actual editing, though I’ve already captured all the footage to hard drive, so a major chunk is already done. Thank you, meiran, for forcing us to finally get that big HD. 🙂
I always expect my list of digital media (games, CDs, DVDs) I’m saving for to be huge… but this weekend I compiled my list of books I’ve been meaning to get. It’s ugly, over a hundred dollars, and that’s just for the top six books… the posthumous Douglas Adams, an illustrated book on gnomes that I loved as a kid, a book on Cold War espionage equipment, and more. Great Ghu, I love to read.
The earliest appointment I can make to get my car inspected is Wednesday at 4:00 pm. The good news is, I’ll be off work by that time. The bad news is, I hope I don’t get pulled over for a expired May sticker today or tomorrow…
Editorial
Got a newsletter from starwars.com which mentioned some of the visual (and one audio) Easter Eggs in Episode 2. What interests me is that despite the fact that Lucas has expressed a basic lack of interest in the “Expanded Universe”, one of the secret items is a freighter which has only ever appeared in the EU. (Talon Karrde’s freighter Wild Karrde is visible for an eyeblink in one scene).
I wish Lucas understood that the Star Wars universe isn’t his personal property any more, and it’s his own fault. Any time a storyteller does as good a job as he did with the first trilogy, people will take it to their hearts and run with it. Just ask Lewis Carroll, or Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. SW is Lucas’ legal property, sure., and it wouldn’t exist without him, but it resides in more places now than just his head.
Would Star Trek be on its fifth incarnation if the show was still under Gene Roddenberry’s inflexible hand? I don’t believe so.
Ah well… even with his blessing removed, the fans and pros will still continue their own Star Wars… and in this creative age, some of it will be as good or better than Lucas’ “vision”.
And I just heard that “Jedi Knight II” will be ported to the Mac and will run on my machine. Soon, I’ll be wielding a lightsaber just like Mace Windu. Okay, Anakin Skywalker. Would you believe Han Solo in Episode V?
Ow. (Achoo.)
I have been moving heavy furniture and kicking up serious dust since Wednesday afternoon. Now, I have a cheap bargain respiratory tract which is allergic to everything, so by last night I was sore from the neck down from lifting and carrying, and my nose was plugged solid.
I can breathe now, but everytime I sneeze I still feel a burning sensation in the muscles of my back. And right now, everything I eat or drink tasts like dust.
On the other hand, now when meiran comes over to do her video editing, she won’t take one look in my office and refuse to associate with me ever again. So that’s a plus. Also, there’s now enough floor space that I can actually walk over to my desk, slide the chair out, and sit down normally, instead of doing the complicated “hop-hop-pirouette” I had to do before.
Now if only that @$%&* new hard drive would get here…
