One bourbon, one scotch, and one mav

Check out Mother Jones’ list of galactically stupid things people have done with intellectual property. It’s like a cornucopia of boundless capitalism.

In addition, everyone should go see V for Vendetta. It has so many eerie parallels to our present government that it’s like one big eerie parallel.

You have to be nuts
To do support all the time
Or at least it helps

They say crazy is
Repeating the same action
And expecting change

If that’s true, then I
am without question, insane
So I’m qualified

Go to work each day
Expecting something to change
So I’m fucking nuts
Continue reading “Job venting to do / I have some anger issues / Oh, go fuck yourself”

“I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It’s called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn’t blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator.” - Chuck Barris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

I watch a lot of movies, because I hate my life and movies make me forget that for 90-180 minutes at a time. I was watching Runaway Jury tonight, and I saw this:

Now all you you know at this point that I am both nerdy and old. Just how old will soon become apparent: I saw that yellow book flash by as the evil bad guys were tearing up our lead actor’s house and immediately recognized it as a Symantec manual from the early 90’s. Am I right?

ENHANCE click drag ENHANCE click drag ENHANCE click drag ENHANCE click drag OH JUST PRINT THE DAMN THING!

Yep, the yellow book on the right is a Norton Utilities manual. First Norton Utilities for Windows manual, in fact. Somewhere in this house I may still have one. It was the first really disappointing, shit product from Symantec that I ever owned (but unfortunately not the least.) Up until this evil yellow manual, Norton Utilities was a bastion of goodness in a sea of shit.

But more interesting than that, how did this particular yellow manual from 1993 or 94 or so end up in a movie from 2003?

I saw Ultraviolet tonight. No, that’s not quite right. I experienced Ultraviolet earlier this evening. There really isn’t any other way to say it.

Kurt doesn’t have a huge body of work, and is at least in part responsible for the slaughtering that Hollywood gave Michael Crichton’s excellent book Sphere. However, to say that I’m a fan of Equilibrium is a galactically huge understatement. Those among you who watched Equilibrium several times know that it is a movie that, upon repeated watchings, teeters on the edge of that unbelievably sharp samurai sword that plays such a role in its ending - it always feels like one step either direction, towards overt acting or overt drama, and the whole thing will fall apart, but it never does. Equilbrium is one of my favorite movies because none of its individual parts - story, action sequences, effects, or acting - when taken by itself is beyond excellence. However, all of the parts put together create a package greater than the sum of its parts, a “daring reinvisioning of a Brave New World-esque landscape” blah blah, de blah blah….

If Equilibrium is the balance, Ultraviolet is what happens when you trip and fall on the sword.
Continue reading “The bell tolls for thee, Kurt Wimmer”

So, what’s Will Wright going to do now that The Sims is played out? Make another game, silly, that’s what he does. Unlike so many other ‘famous’ game developers and studios, Wright seems to actually be able to pull off unique concept after unique concept and make it, you know, work.

Check out his demo video. This looks spec-fucking-tacular. It’s really, really long (on the order of 35 minutes) so take a minute and watch it. You won’t regret it. Hell, it’s worth it just for the fightin’ and makin’ luv sequences.