Guitar Heroes

This is nothing new - it made the rounds on the internet last year - but just in case anyone reading hasn't seen them, I highly recommend the St Sanders "Shreds" videos. Hy-larious.

For the unaware, these are by a Finnish video artist named Santeri Ojala. What he's done is take video performance clips of various guitar heroes (Van Halen, Clapton, etc.) and dub new guitar solos over the videos. Bad guitar solos. Rather like the "experimental free-form jazz odyssey" Spinal Tap is forced to perform after Nigel quits.

Think of it as sort of like an instrumental music version of a What's Up, Tiger Lily?/J-Men Forever kind of thing. The thing is, he does such a good job simultaneously matching what the video shows them playing (well enough to actually fool some people), but at the same time being so completely out of character... well, really, it's indescribable. Just watch. I particularly recommend the one featuring Ozzy Osbourne on hand-claps.

Steve Vai apparently has a sense of humor*, and loved them. Yngwie Malmsteen, not so much: Rumor has it that he's the one who complained to YouTube about copyright violation**, resulting in the creator having his account banned. Oh well, the videos are still there, so I consider it my civic duty to ensure as many people see them as possible...

Also: The non-music related one is fun, too.

*Probably a necessary survival trait in Frank Zappa's band, where you run the risk of having your groupie exploits immortalized in a song like "Stevie's Spanking".

**Despite this obviously being parody, and therefore falling under the Fair Use exception.

Movie Reviews

Hairspray (2007) - An OK movie, in spite of John Travolta. Every other actor in this film did a great job (particularly the lead girl playing Tracy), but Travolta was so atrociously bad that I actually found myself getting through his scenes by developing a mental block around him, erasing him from the film and fantasizing someone better in his place. Just off the top of my head: Harvey Fierstein, Tim Curry, Nathan Lane, John Goodman; hell, Robert DeNiro could probably have done a better job. I've seen Monty Python sketches with more convincing female characters (as played by men in drag).

I'd love to know what kind of accent Travolta thought he was speaking in, but mostly he suffered from something I know I've seen before, though I'm not sure where (possibly Wesley Snipes in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar): He doesn't play the character as a woman, or even as a drag queen. He plays the character as a straight man in drag, with a bit of a "wink" to let the audience know that "I'm just playing around here, you know - I'm not gay". As a result, he holds back just enough to make the whole performance seem uncomfortable and unconvincing.

Beyond illustrating the dangers of stunt casting, it was a competently-filmed version of a Broadway-musical-ized movie, but the original film was still better. For one thing, in the original film, the whole theme of racial integration sort of snuck in. It paradoxically gained power by not being the main focus. In the Broadway version, it's there pretty much from Scene One: The very first Corny Collins song talks about the "white kids" on his dance show. It's obvious right from the start that racial integration is what Hairspray is "about", in this incarnation. That may also be what the original was "about", in some sense, but it made its points with more subtlety. And there's a word I'll bet you never expected to apply to a John Waters film, eh?

And, another in a continuing series:

Things I Learned from Saw III

Serial killers have the magical ability to track down a person who witnessed a drunk-driving hit-and-run, even though they explicitly did not testify in the trial.

Her failure to testify in the trial meant she was morally deserving of punishment, even though the injustice in the case wasn't that the driver went free from lack of evidence, but rather that he was given a short sentence. Somehow, testimony from an eyewitness would have prevented that, apparently.

Someone who is alive and presumably generating some amount of body heat through metabolic processes, albeit hanging naked in a freezer, can not only freeze to death, but actually be coated with a layer of solid ice in a matter of minutes just by spraying them with (liquid) water.

Bare shotgun shells with no gun barrel surrounding them at all nevertheless still fire directionally.

You have a ring of said shotgun shells around your neck, rigged to go off and blow up your head if the Rube Goldberg Killer's heart stops. Your husband comes by with a gun. Instead of shouting something unmistakable and unambiguous like "If you kill him, I'll die", stick to less direct exclamations like "Wait", "Don't", that sort of thing. If he really loves you, he'll stop and ask for clarification before attacking the guy holding you both hostage, and who just forced him to crawl through six kinds of hell.

Bunch Of Commies

For work, I'm reading the study materials for INS 21 - Property and Liability Insurance Principles. Here is an actual question from the study guide:

Social Security is a federal government program that (among other benefits) provides a base-level income to beneficiaries who reach the age at which they can collect benefits. Justify the need for this program to be administered by the federal government.

Obviously, my personal, honest answer would be, "I cannot justify it, because I do not believe that such a need actually exists," but I don't think that's the answer they're looking for.

This is just one example of a trend I have noticed in the study materials: Wherever there is any discussion of federal or state regulations or insurance programs, the authors automatically and silently assume that such things are (A) desirable and/or necessary, and (B) cannot possibly exist except through government action.

Geeky Cool

This guy has some really cool customized action figures. In particular, because I'm a sucker for both Star Wars and alternate-universe type things, the Steampunk Star Wars and Star Wars 1942 collections caught my eye.

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: