Lunar Obverse

Familiar

2008-07-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw something in the Independent Film Revival's showing of "The Squid and The Whale" that shocked me and turned the movie from being a dark comedy about an upper-middle-class family falling apart into a study of where I, personally, may have gone completely off the rails.

I'm still processing it.

Unknown

2008-07-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

It was close to 10:30 PM. My neighborhood grocery store was almost deserted. I was on my way home, and because of the intersection of me having a lottery ticket for tonight's drawing and being near the store where I'd bought it, I had stopped in to see if I was a winner.

The answer is almost always no. Even when it's yes, it's for small amounts. So my normal course of action is to delay finding out for a long time, to delay even finding out if anyone has won the big prize. The longer I can go without, the more fun I can extract from dreaming about what I'll do if I find myself suddenly rich.

Quit my job. Buy and operate my own strip club. Travel the world. See a baseball game in every major league stadium. Take intensive martial arts training, buy a supercar, like a Dodge Viper, and drive from town to town, righting wrongs and living and loving (possibly with an exotic pet, like a monkey or a talking cat).

As you can see, my dreams quickly spiral out of control. I mean, c'mon. One can't run a strip club without a connection to organized crime. Who am I kidding?

My friends see me as a very rational person, and so, knowing the mathematical odds against actually winning the lottery, they seem surprised that I play. I don't pay more than a dollar or two at a time, though, because I know that spending more doesn't appreciably increase my chances. However, the difference between having a ticket and not having a ticket are measurable. Also, see above - I like dreaming a little, but I still need a basis for my dreams. Like buying a ticket.

The Oregon Lottery puts self-serve machines in various establishments, to let ticket holders scan their own tickets to see if they've won or not. It was before one such machine that I now found myself.

I held the barcode under the laser, watched the thin red lines criss-cross the printed paper, and then the cold blue LEDs lit up. Invariably, the machines say:

"Sorry Not a Winner"

..but this time, it said:

"Congratulations Please See Retailer"

See, it doesn't tell you how much you've won. Just a simple yes/no on the fact of winning. I don't know why they've chosen to do this, except perhaps as further marketing and hype. Get the winning customers thinking about their winnings as they're forced to approach another human being, hopeful, optimistic. A dream shared is a dream more than doubled. Trebled, maybe even quadrupled.

Just so, I approached the lone cashier, an Asian lady whom I recognize from years of shopping here but with whom I've never really made any kind of connection. "Excuse me," I asked, "Can you help me cash this?"

She looked up from counting money, glanced back towards the same place I had just checked this ticket. "There's a machine over there..."

"Oh, I know. It said this is a winner, but I don't know how much." I explain.

She turned her head the other direction and looked towards a dark glass counter full of baked goods and pastries. "Oh..." she sounded customer-service-sad, "The register we pay lottery tickets out of is in the Bakery, and it's closed. I'm sorry."

I smiled as if to say I was not put out by this. In fact, I wasn't. "It's OK," I said as I walked off, "I'll just spend tonight dreaming of big money."

That was last night.

I still haven't checked it.

Nobody spoil it for me. I like walking around pretending I'm a millionaire.

I'm pricing Porsches as I type.

Killing

2008-07-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

Cheetah kills crocodile:

Whoa. (h/t to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer)

All the frustration of the day in one simple interaction

2008-07-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

I sat at the bus stop, tired, checking up on this and that on my iPhone. The bench was comfortable, and no one else was around. Cars would drive by, and around the corner people waited outside the sushi shop, but there was no one in my immediate vicinity.

The bus wasn't going to show up for another hour. Even though it was only a 20 minute walk home from where I sat, still, I sat and surfed and ignored people.

It had been a long day. My frustration at Tri-Met's erratic bus schedules on Sunday was just under the surface. Yet another stupid way religion impacts the non-religious. But I tried to let go of my frustration. I knew it grew from being hungry, and tired, and a little bit sunburned.

A thin lady walked up and stood right in front of me. "Is the bus coming? Do you know when it's coming?" She talked fast, and wavered on her feet, and appeared to have different ideas about personal space than I did.

"An hour. It won't be here for an hour," I said. "Eight-fifty-six."

"An hour?" She looked at her cell phone, closed it, put it back in her purse. "Well!" In one smooth movement she pulled out a pack of smokes and spun around to sit right next to me. "Well, I'll just smoke a cigarette then go back to the bar, then!"

My tiredness and frustration came to a boil. She's going to smoke. Right next to me. At a bus stop.

Which is supposed to be a non-smoking area.

In my own smooth movement, I swung my messenger bag over my neck, stood, and put my iPhone away. I turned to walk home, even though I was tired. I did not want to yell at the lady, which I knew I would do if I tried to explain. I think the no smoking rule is stupid, because there's no way to enforce it except by social pressure, which is easily ignored. And I'm not confrontational enough, especially when I'm tired, to do the enforcing. So tonight I'd rather walk.

"Oh, you don't drink?" the lady said, sarcastically.

I turned around briefly. "No. I don't smoke." But I fumed for several blocks thinking about that encounter as I walked home.

39 years

2008-07-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

Thirty-nine years ago today, men stood on the moon for the first time.

Will we ever go back?

Hellboy II

2008-07-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

In spite of being about a demon who is fated to destroy the Earth, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" is surprisingly... cute.

Deep thought

2008-07-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

Apparently California uses more gas and oil than China.

This makes sense.

When I picture a scene in China, I picture lots of people on bicycles. Don't you?

What I've been doing

2008-07-16T08:05:00.001-07:00

Pretty much nothin'.

Oh, wait. I went for a walk in my neighborhood last night. I walked down to Oaks Park because I'd heard that the Rose City Rollers were having team tryouts, and I thought looking at Goth-y, tattooed chicks on roller skates and yelling at each other might be entertaining.

It wasn't, or at least not as much as I'd hoped.

On their website, the Rose City Rollers had said that the tryouts would not be open to the public, and so I'd practiced a line that I thought I'd give if anyone challenged me; I'd tell them I was a writer, and I was preparing a story. If they'd asked what paper I wrote for, I would just tell them I'm a freelancer.

No one challenged me. And I didn't talk to anyone or ask nosy questions, like what were they doing the night of the murder, or if they noticed a light in the upper window of the old MacNaughton mansion. I just hung around outside the big green hangar and watched them skate around and talk about the team for 20 minutes.

A friend had mentioned she might be there, too, and she's hot, so that gave me even more incentive to be there. But it was muggy, and I was tired, and poorly dressed (jeans and t-shirt and sexy (but hot-in-a-temperature-way) hat) so even though I showed up and poked around, I ended up leaving probably too early to meet up with her. I wandered around the midway of Oaks Park for a bit, and watched kids and families having a grand time on the rides, and eat snow cones and cotton candy and drive bumper cars and get swung around in the air in various ways. I think I'll go back later this week and just spend an hour wandering around, as long as the weather stays nice. It's kinda fun.

After that I walked back across Oaks Bottom, or as I like to call it, "the swamp", and up the trail into Sellwood Park, and then into Moreland, where I bought a gelato (half hazelnut chocolate, half raspberry (locally grown!)), which was delicious and also put me just under my calorie goal for the day. Then I got some groceries and grabbed a bus home.

Oh! And also, I upgraded my iPhone to the 2.0 OS. Which I'm kinda regretting, because it's kinda buggy. The keyboard was hanging up the whole phone the past several days, getting worse and worse, which frustrated me. And it uses up the battery faster. Or maybe that's just because I'm playing with it more; I can't tell. Anyway, I did a restore without restoring my backup, which is the iPhone equivalent of reinstalling the OS from scratch, and it seems to be OK now. It doesn't freeze up like it did before. But I'll keep worrying until Apple puts out a patch.

Oh, and I'm writing movie reviews for a 'zine that's coming out soon. At least I'm going to submit them. We'll see if a) they get accepted, and b) the 'zine actually gets published. It's all up in the air. But I have to move fast on that because the 'zine is going to be published soon. So be mad at me if I don't actually do something in the next couple of days, OK?

So... yeah. Not much goin' on.

Two-thumbed fist

2008-07-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

Saw "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" last night, a documentary about one of my intellectual heroes.

It made me sad that he's gone, and mad that he's not here to excoriate the Bush Administration and other politicians, and it made me want to get really drunk and write a lot.

So I'd say it succeeded.

Strange that two of my heroes, Thompson and Philip Kindred Dick, shared so many traits. Both incredible and prolific writers, both addicted to drugs, both haunted and fearful of politicians and particularly President Nixon. Both reclusive but social, opening their homes to strangers and newfound friends (and young nubile women), to the detriment of their marriages.

And both of them with personality issues.

Hmm. Food for thought.

The Sucky Section

2008-07-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ken found some video from Thursday night's Foo Fighters concert at the Rose Quarter. Apparently YouTube user crawlingkitty shot several videos from the show, situated as she (he? I mean no offense, I just can't tell) was in the General Admission section on the floor.

Ken spotted the fact that I appear several times in the video below (and he's probably a bit sad that he didn't show up, since he and his wife were right next to me):

What's that? You didn't see me? Had a hard time spotting my magnificent hat in the blurry phone-cam video? Here's a screen grab, from around the 1:36 mark:

Click pic to embiggen

Dave Grohl's pointing right at me! Or something.

Fighting Foo

2008-07-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

Maybe longer post and more (fuzzy iPhone) pictures later. Maybe.

But I just wanted to note that I saw Dave Grohl and company last night.

Arena rock isn't my normal kind of thing, but I'll make an exception for the Foo Fighters.

Much Foo ass was kicked. And many Foo names were taken.

Goodbye Constitution

2008-07-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately.

Didja notice that the Democratic-led Congress handed President Bush the gift of monarchy yesterday? When King Bush II signs H.R. 6304 into law today (probably cackling with glee over just how much the "opposition party" in Congress gave him), you can say goodbye to any protection from unreasonable search and seizure you may have thought was provided by the Bill of Rights.

Didja notice that? No?

I'm sorry; go back to your American Idol, and make sure to go to church on Sunday to pray to Invisible Sky Man. Didn't mean to disturb your slumber.

I almost forgot

2008-07-05T21:19:00.000-07:00

Since I plan on logging every movie I watch in a theater this year, I almost forgot to post that I saw "Secretary" last Monday, as part of the ongoing Independent Film Revival series.

I felt almost skeevy being there alone. Alone in the crowd, I mean. Lots of couples, both boy-girl and girl-girl. I couldn't tell if the girl-girl couples were friends or lovers. I tried not to stare. Man, I'm self-conscious just thinking about it almost a week later.

And after the movie, I felt as if the movie confused and angered me. Yeah. I got issues.

War and peace

2008-07-05T15:21:00.001-07:00

In the past couple of days, I've seen two movies.

Thursday night I saw "War, Inc." It's a satire, a thinly-disguised story of a man, played by John Cusack, who is hired by the former vice-president, now C.E.O. of Tamerlane Industries, to conduct a trade show in Turaqistan. Oh, and to help conduct the world's first-ever war run entirely by private industry. And by "conduct", I mean political assassination. And also a political marriage between a Turaqistanian pop star (played by Hillary Duff) and the son of the Emirate.

I tried to get into the movie, I really did. But it all hits a little close to home for me. I found myself thinking, "this isn't really that far from real life" and it kept drawing me out of the story. Dan Ackroyd's Dick Cheney impersonation didn't help. Ben Kingsley's faux Southern accent didn't help. Seeing Joan Cusack ham it up didn't help. Marissa Tomei as an investigative journalist didn't help. Even Montel Williams as the soothing voice of GuideStar (an OnStar clone) didn't help.

Today, I saw "Hancock". Reviews were mixed - on the one hand, Dustin at Pajiba said the second half of the movie ruined the easy-going first half. But Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, said it was good (with minor science nitpicks, which can be expected of a superhero movie). I was unsure if it was worth seeing or not.

I liked it. I liked it because of Will Smith, and because of Jason Bateman, and because of Charlize Theron. And it was funny, and Hancock's character grew over the course of the movie. I was surprised that it was only 92 minutes - I suspect some backstory was cut. Maybe the backstory didn't work; internet gossip has it that there were some last-minute re-shoots just two weeks prior to opening weekend, never a good sign.

But I liked it. It's no "Iron Man" but it was funny.

Nothing

2008-07-04T22:45:00.001-07:00

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

Patriotism

2008-07-04T15:37:00.001-07:00

Happy Independence Day from Portland, Oregon.

Call me a softie but...

2008-07-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

Reading Roger Ebert's post titled "When a movie hurts too much", I'm reminded that, at least since my mother's initial run-in with cancer, through the nerve-wracking days when my niece was born and had to spend extra days in the hospital, to my mother's second and final run-in with cancer, and brought to complete sad fruition when my sister's father-in-law went to a hospital and never left two summers ago...

I can't watch any movie scene set in a hospital room without at least tearing up.

The only exception is watching "Scrubs", but that's rarely about actual hospital stuff. But if they show a patient, in that distinctive bed, and the little monitor is beeping.... yeah. Tears.

These three songs

2008-07-03T09:50:00.001-07:00

These three songs came up on my iPhone this morning, and each one earned a second listen, even though they all evoked different feelings and memories in me.

First, Moby's "At Least We Tried":

Second, Bad Religion's "Honest Goodbye":

Finally, Bob Marley's "Satisfy My Soul":

I love random music because it's a hotbed of apophenia.

Happy Independence (from superstition) Day!

2008-07-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

On this day one-hundred and fifty-seven years ago (1 July 1850) Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin gave a joint reading of their papers to the Linnean Society in London, outlining their independently-reached theories of the process of natural selection. Natural selection was the first plausible mechanism that explained the alreadyobserved process of evolution, or change in species over time, and in fact explained the rise of new species from the contingent history of previous ones.

As P.Z. says, that makes today a scientific Independence Day.

G'head and celebrate by blowing some fireworks up or somethin'.

OKfine

2008-06-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

I finally succumbed to FriendFeed. What is it, you ask? Well, my sexy yet apparently-cave-dwelling reader, it's a site that aggregates all the various social networking web apps into one spot. So instead of trying to track my friends' Tweets, Flickr updates, YouTube uploads, blog posts, etc., etc... I just track it all on FriendFeed. Is this not nifty?

Yes. It is nifty.

I will find a way to incorporate it as a sidebar here on my blog. In fact, I'm thinking of updating the layout here a bit. We'll see how that goes.

Wanted

2008-06-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

"Wanted" is badass but shallow. It's more cynical (cynical means assuming people and their motives are base, rather than noble) than "Fight Club". It's not as funny or as ultimately inspiring as "Office Space". And it's more misogynistic and unreal (bending bullets?) than "The Matrix".

I enjoyed the spectacle but I didn't like where it was going.

Thanks to Pajiba's review for the comparison of "Wanted" to those three movies. Hard to believe they all came out in 1999, isn't it?

Do you know all the words?

2008-06-27T17:40:00.000-07:00

I love Schoolhouse Rock even more today than I did when I was a kid.

Do you know all the words to the Preamble to the Constitution? I do. And I tend to sing it, just as it's sung in this song:

We, the People,
In order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice
ensure domestic tran-quil-i-tee hee-ee-ee,
provide for the common defense
promote the general welfare, an-nd
secure the blessings of liber-ty
to ourselves and our posteri-ty,

Do ordain and establish
this Constitution
Forrrrrr
The United State of
Am-er-i-caaaaa!!

"Right On!" indeed.

Thank you, Senator Wyden

2008-06-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

Senator Ron Wyden will support a fillibuster of the tragically unconstitutional FISA rewrite.

Thank you, Senator Wyden.

Spinning

2008-06-24T19:00:00.001-07:00

...OK, now I want to try that. Off to the mall!

What I won't trade for trust

2008-06-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

"Whoo! Yeah, sexy! How you doin'?"

I turned my head to the right as I walked home. From the sidewalk I could see the woman who had just called out to me. She sat in a lawn chair along with several others, visible in the back yard of a house in my neighborhood.

Yes, she was looking at me.

"And whatcha got in that bag?" she yelled out again.

I kept walking.

I had donuts in the bag.