Wabi-Sabi

They are going to reboot the Alien franchise. And 20th Century Fox is making it. I mean…sure, they own the rights to the franchise, but god damn, haven’t they done enough to ruin the franchise already?

You assholes got lucky and Ridley Scott turned out one of the best horror/suspense films of all time. It’s been 30 years, you’ve whored it out enough, let’s just leave well enough alone. Fuck you Hollywood. Fuck you in the ass with a sideways Mack truck you dirty sons of bitches.

And the worst part is that they’ll probably make a cool trailer and I’ll want to go see it and then I’ll feel bad that I gave into my hopes and dreams that the movie wouldn’t turn out to be a piece of shit, and I’ll be disappointed.

THR.com is reporting that Al Pacino has signed on to play the role of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in an HBO Films biopic.

”The film will trace his rise as he builds his infamous “Mercy Machine,” conducts his first assisted suicide, and starts a media frenzy with his epic legal battles defending a patient’s right to die.”

The real kicker about the whole thing? The films title: You Don’t Know Jack. Seriously. Is this supposed to be a comedy? Isn’t it a bit careless, regardless of where you stand on the issue, to make a light-hearted film about euthanasia? Is it is supposed to be a serious film, and if so why the parody title?

I am confused.

I already have been looking forward to this movie for some time now, but after watching this trailer I want to see it so bad my dick is hard.

Mike Tyson singing Phil Collins + Zach Galifianakis + The producer from Old School at the helm as director? Yes, please.

So there was this Archbishop in Milwaukee that had to retire back in 2002. Apparently back in 1998, he paid $450,000 to his gay lover who had accused him of rape. As if that wasn’t enough, it was also revealed in 2003 that he covered up allegations against 58 other priests who liked to put their junk in children.

And now this retired Archbishop, one Rembert G. Weakland, has a memoir on the way that is sure to be a delightful tale of a man’s sexual escapades with minors and/or other men, and all the crazy orgies held by priests with children in the backrooms of churches. Or, you know, a sappy and boring piece of shit detailing how he isn’t such a bad guy after all. One or the other.

Anyways, I found a funny little quote from his yet-to-be published memoirs that I am sure will just delight everyone who is a fan of child-rape:

”We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature.”

Also:

”Accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’.”

OHHHHH….So THAT’s why they hid the abuse from the public for so long. Not because they wanted to save themselves humiliation and legal repercussions. It was just because they didn’t realize fucking children was a crime, and the children would totally grow out of it anyway. Plus, those filthy priests would get whats coming to them in the afterlife… unless….(gasp) they went to confessional first! Sweet Jesus, it’s almost as if there were a loophole in their logic somewhere!

Fucking assholes…

[caption id=”attachment_685” align=”aligncenter” width=”250” caption=”“CIA, tell me how my ass taste?!”“]

[/caption]

An interesting post by Gary Kelly over at The Quantified Self regarding the recent controversy in the U.S. over who was briefed and when about the government torturing people. The whole thing is a giant clusterfluck of blamestorming that is of little interest honestly. Still, there was an amusing development that Mr. Kelly covered:

”Politicians have always been self-trackers. In the flow of political action, you need a notebook just to keep track of people’s names. But when a recent political controversy was resolved by the notebooks of the most conscientious self-tracker in the history of the United States Senate, the reputation of people interested in personal data got an unexpected boost.
…
Enter Bob Graham, ex-Governor and ex-Senator from Florida. Graham has been keeping careful handwritten records of his daily life since 1977, when he first ran for governor. He tracks a lot of things: weight, diet, what he wears, his location (down to the room), and of course the names of the people he meets with, his questions and their answers, his promises and theirs.
…
Well, there was a noisy politically controversy recently over whether culpability for torturing suspects arrested after the terror attacks of 9-11 should be shared by Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The CIA claimed that Pelosi had been briefed in detail about the torture, and didn’t make any objection until long afterward. Therefore, if there is to be any kind of sanction for torture, it should hit the top Democrat who approved it as well as members of the Republican administration who ordered it. Pelosi, though, denies having been briefed about the torture.

Well, it turns out that Bob Graham was also supposed to have been briefed on these topics, and the CIA forwarded to him the dates of the meetings he supposedly attended. But the CIA records were inaccurate, according to his own personal records. Such was the respect for Graham’s notebooks, that this line of attack was closed within 48 hours.

This is interesting for several reasons. First, it’s worth noting that one man’s spiral bound notebooks were able to accumulate enough credibility to defeat the records of an organization whose very reason for existence is to collect information, communicate it to trusted members of government, and keep records of these communications. Anybody who has been following some of the controversy about patient records can add this strange example to their list of favorite anecdotes. Personal data, kept by a dedicated and interested party, even using yesterday’s technology, will trump large scale collection systems managed by bureaucrats.”

What I find interesting about this whole affair is that it shows just how incompetent the government really is. Watching them run around saying “NO U!” to each other pretty much proves that people who believe in massive government conspiracies have it all wrong. Especially when the CIA is made to look like a bunch of bitches by a 72 year old man and his pocketful of spiral memo pads.

Mao was funny. Fucking insane, but funny.

Rednecks are funny.

I thoroughly enjoyed the new Star Trek. I am glad that it turned out to be such a quality movie, as I was honestly a bit concerned about it from the previews. While it looked entertaining, and I am a big fan of director J.J. Abram’s work, it just didn’t look like Star Trek. Which, as it turns out, is a good thing. My only complaint would have to be about the overabundance of lens flare.It gets to be distracting when the audience is momentarily blinded at least once nearly every other scene in the movie.

It took me a while to accept the fact that I am a Star Trek fan. I was in denial. But once I realized that I have watched, and enjoyed, almost every episode of TnG, DS9 and Voyager, I had to face the music. The fact that before watching the new Star Trek movie, I was able to lecture Sassafras for nearly an hour about the Star Trek universe only to realize I barely gave her a CliffsNotes version of everything I know made this abundantly clear. I thought that just because I despised the original series, didn’t enjoy any of the previous movies, and had no desire to learn Klingon made me safe from the distinction. But it turns out that merely makes me a non-Trekkie.

It also helps that my favorite Star Trek series is Deep Space Nine. I found it much more entertaining with better characters and story lines than any other Star Trek series. To put this into perspective for non Star Trek fans, this is the equivalent of someone saying that they thought The Phantom Menace was a pretty good movie, and that Jar Jar Binks is a cool guy.

Anyways, Matthew Baldwin, from defective yeti, wrote up an interesting Op-Ed piece about the movie for The Morning News. I have always thought of the Vulcans as an interesting speices and culture whose way of thinking resembles that of someone on the Autistic Spectrum. He goes into more detail about this idea better than I ever could have, so go ahead and have a gander at it.

Link: “Autistic Trekdom”

On Friday, May 8th, Sassafras and I celebrated our anniversary. We’ve been together now for eight years, and thankfully, things have only gotten better with time. Relationships are funny things, and it is odd how your feelings for someone ebb and flow through the course of your time together. You find yourself, oddly, falling in love with them over and over again. And it usually seems to happen just as you think things have gone stale and boring. And every time it occurs, you seem to love that person more and, differently somehow. It is difficult to explain.

I do remember the first time I realized I was in love. And it is amusing to reflect upon those feelings and see how…juvenile they were. Not that they were not sincere or legitimate. It is just that the way I feel now is so much deeper and stronger than I would have ever thought possible. No one ever tells you that love isn’t a “thing”. It is more than a state of being, a thought, a feeling or an emotion. It is an ever changing and shifting process. It is a beautiful thing, and I feel fortunate to be able to experience it.

I enjoyed this. This is a bit longer than most internet videos and it started with a rather depressing sequence. Yet, it managed to hold my attention, and made me quite happy that I sat and watched the whole thing. Good stuff.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.820856&w=425&h=350&fv=]