Where Do I Sign Up?

Here is the PPT investor presentation for Greg Costikyan's new business venture: Beer Over IP.

Those Young Whippersnappers With Their Weird Hair and Loud Music

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge says "You will never achieve in a video game. It is not really success."

Leaving aside questions of the nature of "achievement" and "success" in different pursuits, my favorite quote from Mr. Rogge is "We need to hire more young people. If they have baggy pants and pink hair, that's OK."

Mr. Rogge added, "Hey! Get off my lawn, you hooligans!"

Reviews

First: This is difficult, but... OK, I'm just going to say it: The recent/current series of Doctor Who are actually better than even the Tom Baker years. Yes, I know, Tom Baker was the Doctor during my personal golden age, so I am naturally supposed to look on those episodes with such nostalgia that nothing could possibly measure up, but there it is: The new ones are better.

In the old classic Who, good as it was, you'd never have seen them do something as daring as the episode "Blink", where the Doctor and his companion are barely even present in the story. In "Utopia", when the twist involving Derek Jacobi became clear (which I won't spoil here, in case anyone reading hasn't seen that episode), I sat bolt upright in my chair and yelled, "Holy shit!" The voiceover from the alien fiend at the end of "Family of Blood", where he talks about the "wrath of a Time Lord" in downright mythic tones, was brilliant. If I had a criticism, it would be that I wish they could find a way to resurrect the rest of the Time Lords, because frankly, the "I am the last of my kind" whinging is beginning to get a little tedious, and I did like the concept a little better when he was a renegade/outlaw, anyway. But that's nitpicking. Solid, solid show these days.

And the spin-off, Torchwood, by the way, is just as good, kind of like a cross between The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But with more sex: I have a theory that one of the as-yet-unstated effects of the Cardiff Rift Energy is to turn everyone near it into an insatiable (and bisexual) sex maniac.

Next: No Country for Old Men - Amazing, as you should already know. All I really have to say about it is that it makes a very interesting companion piece to Fargo. They share some similarities, but where Fargo ends on a note of hope, No Country is much bleaker, more nihilistic.

Finally: Hard Candy - Good, not great. Ellen Page gives a very good performance. A better movie on a somewhat similar theme was Under Suspicion.

As always, beware of spoilers below. Plus, some of my comments about the ending may not make sense unless you've seen the movie anyway.

The basic idea of the movie is the same as the basic idea behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer: What if the innocent waif you think is the prey turns out to actually be the predator? In this case, Page plays Hayley, a teenage girl who allows herself to be lured back to the home of Jeff, a "fashion photographer" she met on the internet. But just as it looks like he's going to get her drunk and molest her, she drugs him, ties him up, and proceeds to punish him for his sins.

There are some definite plot problems: Much of what happens only makes sense if Hayley is uncertain about whether Jeff really is a pedophile or not, and is searching for either evidence or an admission, but the ending makes it clear that she actually already knows the answer to that question. Also, he periodically does things that seem to foil her plan, only to turn out to be part of her intricately plotted scenario. For example, part of the girl's plan requires that Jeff escape from where she has tied him up, at a certain time, but not earlier. His getting loose cannot have been unintended, because her real goal, her planned ending to everything, requires that he chase her up onto the roof, which he couldn't do while tied to a table. On the other hand, if he had extricated himself earlier, she wouldn't have gotten to try out her castration skills.

I thought Hard Candy could have used a better ending. As it was, it was ultimately a kind of one-dimensional child-molester vigilante-revenge fantasy. We, the audience, are pretty clearly meant to cheer the girl on, especially when she delivers lines like "Who am I? I'm every girl you ever took pictures of/molested/fantasized about/etc." I kept wanting the guy to respond with something like, "No, you're not. You're you, doing this to me, for your own reasons, because it makes you feel good. No. You don't get to be an avenging angel, the personification of all my sins; you're not a personification, you're just a person."

So, following are my suggestions for better endings:

1) Leave the ex-girlfriend out (because having her show up just unnecessarily complicates the scene I'm about to describe). After driving Jeff to confess and hang himself, Hayley goes downstairs and packs up her things. A TV on in the background shows a breaking news story: They've found the missing girl, Donna Mauer, alive, and the man who kidnapped her is in custody. Jeff actually was innocent, as he had originally claimed. With this ending, you've made an interesting point about revenge, and about the reliability of confessions obtained under torture.

2) Similar to the last one, but insert the news report shortly after the scene in which Jeff stabs one of his pictures repeatedly while saying, "This is what I am. Thank you for helping me see that." Have him go on to say, as he stalks Hayley with the knife, that he really has always been attracted to young girls, but that he never had the balls (heh) to act on those urges before. But she's helped him, and now he's going to start with her. That can play out any number of ways - she could shoot him, for example - but now you've made another interesting point about revenge, and about violence breeding violence.

3) For a real shock: After Jeff gets loose from the table, reaches down and discovers the castration was faked, he goes into the bathroom and finds Hayley in the shower, where he joins her, and she embraces him. They're actually lovers*, and this whole thing was acting out his castration fantasy (yes, there are men who are into that sort of thing). Perhaps he might compliment her on adding the videotape, to imply that this is not even the first time they've done this. This ending wouldn't make any interesting points about revenge, but it would blow the audience's minds.



*If that's the right word for a relationship between a grown man and a teenage girl. Although, you could also put something in here to suggest that Hayley is actually older than she appears to be - perhaps she just dresses to look younger as part of the fantasy scenario.

New Bunny Cage

I've added some pictures of the new bunny cage we just built to the Flickr album.

Best Webquiz Ever

The COMBINED GENDER IDENTITY AND TRANSSEXUALITY INVENTORY (COGIATI)

Your COGIATI result value is: 30 Which means that you fall within the following category:
COGIATI classification THREE, ANDROGYNE
What this means is that the Combined Gender Identity And Transsexuality Inventory has classified your internal gender identity to be essentially androgynous, both male and female at the same time, or possibly neither. In some cultures in history, you would be considered to be a third sex, independent of the polarities of masculine or feminine. Your gender issues are intrinsic to your construction, and you will most likely find your happiness playing with expressing both genders as you feel like it.

And yeah, the author of this test clearly intends it to be a serious attempt at helping people who are confused about their sexuality and gender identity. I'd feel a lot worse about belittling it by calling it a "webquiz" if I hadn't read this.

Where Were You in 2000?

From a CNN.com story about the possibility of allowing Democratic primary "revotes" in Florida and Michigan:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says Florida and Michigan cannot be given passes for violating rules that were clear to them, and the DNC would not pay the bill for their errors.

"The rules were set a year and a half ago. Florida and Michigan voted for them and then decided that they didn't need to abide by the rules. When you're in a contest, you do need to abide by the rules," he said.

"You cannot violate the rules of the process and then expect to get forgiven for it," he said.

Dean said he has to run a process that yields an honest result, and, "The only way to do that is to stick to the rules that were agreed to by everybody at the beginning."

(emph. added)

I could swear these arguments sound familiar...

Snow Pictures

New Flickr album up - pictures of the pile of snow in our front yard.

Awwwww...

Yes, I did it - I broke down and submitted a picture to icanhascheezburger.com:


moar funny pictures
That's Suzi, my very own bunny.

And then I saw this, and couldn't resist captioning it. No, that's not my very own llama:

moar funny pictures

Start Hoarding Cookies Now!

Once upon a time, obnoxious busybodies started passing laws banning smoking in public places. When this happened, some of us warned, "next they'll be outlawing fattening foods". The obnoxious busybodies scoffed, "That'll never happen".

Well, apparently while scoffing aloud, deep down inside they were thinking, "That's actually not a bad idea..."

To quote from a proposed Mississippi law: "Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese".

I feel like there should be a long string of exclamation marks after that sentence.

!!!!!

Early Results

On my way in to work this morning, the radio reported that the polls had opened in New Hampshire, and that Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain were currently in the lead(s). All I could think was, "It's EIGHT-THIRTY IN THE GODDAMN MORNING" in New Hampshire! The polls have been open, what, half an hour? Obama and McCain are the favorites among people who get up really early?

Of course, I decided last night that I really wished the Republicans would nominate Duncan Hunter for President, with Fred Thompson on the ticket for VP, just so that the bumper stickers would read "Hunter/Thompson '08". But then, I've given up on hoping for anything but entertainment value from politicians, anymore...

Xmas Pics - My New House Edition

I just put up a Flickr album of a few pictures of my new house, decked out for Christmas. Pics later of the big celebration at my folks' house.

Government Logic

Government steps in to ease flight delays

Fewer flights will be allowed in and out of New York's airports at the busiest times as part of a Bush administration plan to help reduce delays at airports across the United States.

So their plan to reduce inconvenient travel delays is to allow fewer flights? Do they not understand what the word "delay" means?

Delta's senior vice president of network and planning, Bob Cortelyou, said the caps in New York will "be great for our customers" because they will almost certainly ease delays at JFK, and thus lead to fewer disgruntled passengers, and fewer missed connections.

So they won't be disgruntled by not being able to book a flight at all? Or is it just that they'll be pissed off at the government for limiting flights, instead of being pissed off at Delta for being unable to accurately predict arrival times? Not really "fewer disgruntled passengers" so much as just shifting the source of the disgruntlement.

Look on my stapler, ye mighty, and despair!

My birthday present this year:

Milton Waddams: [talking on the phone] "And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire..."

Oh, good

This is exactly what I was hoping would happen. Not all punishments need to be government-imposed.

I'm Glad I'm Not On Their QC Team

A new patch for the online game "EVE Online" makes it impossible to boot Windows XP. Apparently, an extra backslash in the installer causes it to delete an essential system configuration file.

That QC team must be feeling embarrassed. I know I always hate it when I miss a subtle little bug like hosing the operating system.

I suspect that what happened here is that they tested the patch itself, but neglected to test the installer. And that probably happens more often than it should - perceptually, the installer isn't part of the "real" software you’re testing, so it's easy to overlook. The moral of the story: Don't forget to test installation scenarios.

Catching Up

As predicted, here's a pic of my Halloween costume from this year:


Also: Our pumpkin carving:

The Banality of Evil

Boot camp employees not guilty in boy’s death

The defense said Anderson's death was unavoidable because he had undiagnosed sickle cell trait, a usually harmless blood disorder that can hinder blood cells' ability to carry oxygen during physical stress.

Or, in other words:

Sam, there are very rigid parameters laid down to prevent such things happening. It wasn't my fault that Buttle's heart condition didn't appear on Tuttle's file.

Would You Like That Mild, "American Hot", or "Thai Hot"?

I want to eat here:

A Thai restaurant's spicy chilli sauce sparked fears of a chemical attack and led police to evacuate a busy London street.

I Consider Your Argument Misinformed

If for some reason you haven't seen it yet, you may want to check out Zero Punctuation, a (relatively) new videogame review column in the form of short web-based videos. The snark is worth viewing, even if you don't actually play videogames. You also might want to start with the first two, which appeared on YouTube before the creator sold out.

Anyway, at the moment I want to highlight one particular quote from his review of the ultra-violent "Manhunt":

...then the media generally start drooling the usual uninformed questions as to whether wholesome, boyish pretend violence has any correlation with the real world.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No, and go fuck yourselves, you ignorant, scaremongering cockbags.

Movie Night

Death Proof - I never made it out to the theater to see Grindhouse in its original form, so I can only evaluate this as a movie in itself. As such, I would say: Not bad. Certainly worth seeing, at least if you're a fan of the sort of cheesy '70s car-crash movies it pays tribute to. It's not without flaws: There's a section (apparently new to this version) in black and white for no good reason (I can't imagine even a bad theatrical print from 1971 suddenly losing color for a reel). And for a good chunk of what comes after that, it almost seems as if Tarantino forgot that he was trying to recreate the experience of watching a low-budget movie in a grimy theater in the '70s, because the picture just loses all the scratches and things he'd added to the earlier part and becomes a crystal-clear modern-looking film. There are also a few moments that felt like Tarantino just plain showing off his encyclopedic knowledge of pop-culture. Overall, though, certainly not Tarantino's best work, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Having mentioned some of this movie's flaws, I also feel obligated to point out something that isn't a flaw, but which others have called such: The dialogue scenes. Someone calling himself IndustryKiller! on Aint It Cool News put it most succinctly:

Also their conversations go on absolutely forever, especially that diner sequence, which brings the film to screeching halt when tarantino [sic] take 15 minutes to say what could easily take three to five.

I swear, all I could think as I read this was, "Goddamn, have you ever even seen a Corman-esque '70s action-horror movie at all? They were chock full of long, boring, pointless dialogue scenes. In fact, as I was putting the DVD in and started up the movie, I remember wondering how Tarantino was going to deal with/recreate the long stretches of downright boredom that tended to creep into the movies he was homage-ing. Thankfully, he dealt with it by putting in long stretches of Tarantino Dialogue™, which at least tends to be more interesting to watch than what actually ended up in most of the real '70s grindhouse movies.

I've seen several reviews complaining that '70s exploitation movies were short, and thus didn't have a lot of unnecessary stuff in them, but it's just not true. Movies today are edited much tighter and quicker than they used to be. George Lucas comments on this in one of the Star Wars DVD commentaries - that he tried to make the original as fast-paced as he could, but that by today's editing practices, it's downright flabby. That also tended to be true of the kind of movies Tarantino is referencing, and often doubly so.