dancingbob5

Ah, screw it. This is the holiday season after all, so up goes the festive wallpaper. BTW, these guys (among many others) could use your help, monetarily speaking.

I almost considered putting up one of the Christmas design variations, but this bit of news gave me pause. .

Remember Guinea? Remember that post I made detailing some of the atrocities there? It seems that the guys with the blue helmets have finally gotten around to agreeing that something needs to be done about the situation, including putting some of Camara's buddies on trial.

BTW, allow me to shed great big crocodile tears over the fact that Camara was popped by one of his own soldiers in this ongoing example of rule by outright thuggery.

SF author I did not expect to post an Avatar review? Greg Egan.

I like to think I am a reasonable movie goer. I am willing to play along and go with it for the sake of art direction and plot. But Avatar was not good. I did not like it. Without spoliers, I will just say what I thought.

I have mental categories for judging movies.
Plot
Acting
Art Direction (or cinematography)
and on a pass/fail music.

Plot.
Awful. I am not stupid. Really! Gullible, yes, easily tricked, yes, stupid, no.

Acting.
Ok. No one was terrible.

Art Direction/Cinematography
Very good. I love the 3d and the seamless-ness of the animation-to-real life.
I was worried that it would appear more gimicky then valid, but Cameron did a good job between using the 3d to represent depth and the "ooh sparklie" aspect.

Music.
Sadly, this gets an incomplete. Either the music is good. You remember it, it highlights important scenes, or add emotion to (weak) acting. Usually, it's something you don't pay attention to. Then there are times where it's god-awful (Eragon) where it just hammers you with emotions you were not feeling. This movie had a bit of both. There are times where I didn't feel the music, it was part of the background, but during the epic battle scenes, they amped it up and I was annoyed.

This movie is long. While I like exploring worlds, seeing other peoples creativity, but this was very long. I felt the time. I saw this in 3d imax so near the 2 hour mark, my eyes got tired.

Verdict:
Worth seeing, if you want to see the possible future of movies technologically, but otherwise that's it. It's a must see at the movies 3d. Otherwise it's for tv with commercials.

also
I found super h mart. yay!

I saw "Avatar" today. I thought it was really good. The special effects were amazing. It was almost impossible to tell that it was CGI and not live action, except for the fact that all those cool aliens don't really exist.
The plot was kinda cliche, the whole "evil humans exploit innocent indigenous species" thing, but it was still enjoyable.
The world just looked so awesome, especially with the 3D. It's the next best thing to actually getting to explore an alien planet!

What's the deal, and WTF?  Since I started driving in the early 1970s, I was taught that when you pull up to the gas pump one is REQUIRED to turn off the vehicle's engine while refilling, because extremely flammable and explosive liquids around an active ignition source like the car's engine.  HELLO!!  Addtionally, even though current pump price is much less that about 18 months ago or so, it still strikes me as a wasteful practice.  However, around here it seems to be fairly routine for people to leave their cars running throughout the refueling procedure;  if I remember correctly, most states have statutes or regulations carry the force of law that make these scofflaws subject to police citation.  Maybe these cars are so poorly constructed that within the the few minutes it takes to refuel their car will cool down to the ambient temperature and make the passengers uncomfortable; in other words, a little chilly? 

Poll #1501193 hominidae
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

Aside from humans, which is your favorite great ape?

I think snow is pretty, but I don't like to drive in it. And by February I'm pretty damn sick of it. If I was rich, I'd probably spend most of the winter in a warmer climate, like Mexico or Greece.

Ed Brayton authors a short, entirely accurate assessment of that singularly disgusting charlatan and - unsuprisingly - the religious wackjobs come crawling out of the woodwork in response. Quelle surprise. 

$DO || !$DO ; try
try: command not found

( are you ready...? )

Raven

 So would one necessarily think that Shojo Beat, a manga magazine put out by Viz Media, is the great source for book recommendations; well, you might be surprised. Some months back they ran a short interview and book announcement about Turning Japanese by Cathy Yardley? Basic plot outline a small town lady, Liz Falloya who is a Japanese/Italian/American, from upstate New York wins a manga contest put on by a Japanese publisher, and one of the prizes for winning is a one year internship with the publisher in Japan, and this book is the fictional story of her year in Japan. During her year in Japan she goes through huge homesickness, huge adjustments to her internship, but after a little while she connects some with her host family, and finds a reason to enjoy her internship besides as the chance to work on manga in Japan. But, she has some problems that were unexpected with the friends, family and fiancee she left back in the U.S. I enjoyed this book alot; in my opinion, this has potential to be considered the Bimbos of the Death Sun for anime and manga fandom, although it's a completely different type of story. Since reading this I've learned that Ms Yardley is known as a genre romance writer, but this book would require industrial level shoehorning to fit this text into romance genre. Cathy shows an amount of famaliarity with geek culture, since there are appropriate references to Gaiman, Gibson and Sterling. However, it's not perfect in this aspect, the book's opening scene is in San Diego's ComicCon, because Liz and some of her anime friends from New York go the convention annually. According to anime/manga fans I know San Diego ComicCon is not really a big deal for their fandom. (I could make a geeky comparison using CreationCons as an example, but I'm not going to). I have no way of knowing if Cathy's description of life at a manga publisher is anything like she describes it or not.

Mister James Morrow, I enjoy your smack talk, sir.

SCOUNDREL OF THE YEAR

So there I was, all set to convert to Judaism, my war with God having finally ended, and then along comes the imperially pious Senator Joseph Lieberman. Sorry, Yahweh. Tough darts, Adoni. The deal is off. If You cannot be bothered to inform Mr. Lieberman that You are personally revolted by his gelding of health-care reform in the United States, then I’m going back to worshipping trees.

From this entry.

Edited to reflect updated formatting in original post.

I got a giggle out of the humor displayed in the vid advertising BrewDog's frightening new Tactical Nuclear Penguin (which I first caught on the morning news on WMAQ-TV, of all places!), and at 64 proof (!) it apparently really is the most potent brew in existence, beating Sam Adams' Utopias by a 5% margin.

And now, the downside: according to NBC-5, a bottle of this stuff will cost you about (aboot?) $50 US.
 
My guess is that this is worth picking up, but only after you get a big, fat, entirely insane bonus at work.

That, or a sack of money from an armored car smacks you in the face after the truck gets abducted by aliens.

IOWA CITY (AP) - An Iowa City woman is charged with theft for allegedly failing to return 53 DVDs she borrowed from the local public library.

Authorities say Saira Virginia Denny-Cline was charged late Tuesday for failing to return the DVDs, due back at the library on Oct. 2.

According to police, the Iowa City Public Library staff sent a certified letter to Denny-Cline noting the items were "long overdue." The letter said the 53 DVDs, valued at $1,360, were to be returned or paid for within two weeks of the notice.

Court records indicate the notices also said a lack of action would result in the case being pursued as theft.
Iowa City Woman Arrested for Not Returning DVDs | KCRG-TV9 | Cedar Rapids, Iowa News, Sports, and Weather | Local News
Don't fuck with the library.

I've already posted some links from Windy 36 elsewhere, but rolling through the chicago-sf.org forum is as good a method or poaching 'em as a search on Google. Three more Flickr links courtesy of strange_fetish, hida_dragonbane and Strangeknowledge can be accessed here or on the forum thread itself and this link is courtesy of the Airship Lollypop (!) website.

Peeps, feel free to indulge your inner costuming geek and send me some more.

I have been cooking a lot of recipes from my clean eating magazine and I am finding that it is lacking a lot of flavor. I need to add salt. Then it's pretty ok.

ah.

anyway I am not dead, tho I will pretend to be for a while.

Thanks and have a nice day.

I had a good time at Matt's movie night yesterday. We watched "Real Genius", I was one of the few who hadn't seen it already. Fun movie. Matt also made chocolate cakes for us, and we ordered pizza. Yum! And I got to pet the chinchilla. So cute!

I checked out a pedometer from the library because I wanted to see how much I usually walk in a day. So I'd have something to compare it to, I decided to google how many steps the average person walks in a day.


Well, I suppose that says something about...something.

On the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees for 2010:

The Stooges: about damn time, especially in the wake of Ron Asheton's death earlier this year.

Jimmy Cliff and the Hollies are equally worthy, albeit for vastly different genres.

Genesis: okay, they gave us Peter Gabriel. They also gave us a whole slew of post-Gabriel singles that can either be considered gems of 80's MOR or pure dross depending on how equipped you are to take 80's nostalgia seriously.

And then there's Abba. You do the math on that one.

Just when you thought it was safe to assume that The Stupid couldn't get any deeper, another bucket of the stuff gets spilled courtesy an apparently mentally challenged "physician" calling itself Dr. Joe Mercola.

Chances are that you could get better medical advice from a rock.