Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

DVDs: Closets, aliens, and dinos

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I was only planning on one purchase for the week, but ended up with three, as I got a $25 gift certificate from Suncoast the other day. This weeks acquisitions:

The Celluloid Closet: A friend introduced me to this absolutely fascinating documentary a few years back, I’m in the midst of reading the book that inspired it, and it finally got released to DVD this week. It’s a really entertaining documentary about the portrayal of homosexuals in movies over the first 100 years of moviemaking, loaded with some great interviews, and tons of clips from various films over the years, from some of the earliest movies made to some as recent as the early ’90’s. One of my favorite documentaries that I’ve seen, and it’s nice to finally have a copy of my own.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: If you haven’t heard of this one — what rock have you been living under? One of the seminal Sci-Fi films to come out, and one of Steven Spielberg’s best works, this classic also holds the distinction of being one of the few films I can think of off the top of my head (aside from Starman, ET and Contact) to look at alien encounters in a positive light. This looks to be a nice special edition, with two discs — one for the ‘definitive’ director’s cut of the film, and the second packed with extra features.

Allosaurus: A continuation of the excellent Walking With Dinosaurs documentary, this program follows the life of ‘Big Al’, an Allosaurus whose nearly-complete skeleton was discovered in 1991. The skeleton had been so well preserved that scientists have been able to reconstruct an amazing amount of details as to the life of the beast, and it is presented here in the same ‘nature-documentary’ style that the previous shows were. The disc also includes a clever making of special that explains some of how the dinosaur’s life was reconstructed.

Unemployed weekends

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Well, it’s official. As of 5pm today, I am officially unemployed. Now I’ve got no solid pans for the next two weeks other than getting everything I own sorted, packed, and ready to ship to Seattle. Kinda cool — kinda scary. I haven’t been without a job in about ten years…this is a new thing for me.

Friday night I went out to the Last Frontier bar out in Muldoon and met up with some of the people I talk with online in the chatrooms. Aurorawhisper and her husband are being shipped off to Germany in about a month — and I’m incredibly jealous, by the way — so a few of us had gathered to have a small going away celebration. Was a fun night, with some very amusing moments. At one point I’d stepped outside for a smoke (as the bar was just way too hot for most of the night), when the DJ came out and we chatted for a few moments, and he complimented me both on my dancing, and the fact that I had no fear when it came to dancing — I’ll just head out into the middle of an empty floor and have fun. As I turned to head back in, though, one of the bouncers stopped me to ask how much I’d had to drink — apparently he wasn’t as convinced my dancing style was natural. Too funny…especially as all I’d had was one Smirnoff Ice, and was nowhere near even buzzed. All in all, a fun night.

Today I had my last day of work, and came home afterwards to a pleasant surprise — my friend Andrea had stopped by with Kyle, her brand new (one month old) son. She’d wanted to make sure to see me before I left, and came into town tonight to visit for a bit. We sat around and talked for a while, but eventually I started wearing down, and decided it was time for bed.

So, I’m updating the page, and then it’ll be bedtime for me. Tomorrow begins two projects — the quicker being the finalizing of the sale of my car (yuppers — looks like I’ve got a definite buyer), and the major one being the packing project. Wish me luck — I might need it!

This I’ve gotta get!

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I had no idea that this was available at all, but I’ve got to get one one way or another. Henry Rollins has finally just released a spoken-word performance to DVD! I was lucky enough (as were a bunch of my friends) to be able to see him when he came to give one of his spoken word performances at UAA a few years back, and I’ve already got two of the spoken word CD’s he’s released. The guy does a just incredible show, going from fall-on-the-floor hilarious one moment to amazingly heartfelt and serious the next — when it hit the three hour point during his show up here and he was told that he had to wrap it up, I don’t think anybody in the audience realized it had been nearly that long, or wanted it to end.

In any case, DVDFile has a great review of the DVD up here, and I’m going to end up with this. Hmmm…anybody want to buy me a going away present? ;)

I’m hungry…

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…and since it’s after my lunch time, I can’t exactly bail out of here to grab something to eat. Guess I’ll just have to order myself a Ninja Burger.

The Tick would either be very proud. Or very disturbed.

Or in the end — just very full.

Slight page updates

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I just went through and made some slight adjustments to some of the pages on the site (mainly this one, my resume, and my DJ Wüdi propaganda) to reflect the fact that I’m not going to be in Anchorage for much longer. More later…it’s about lunchtime here at work.

Though I do have to wonder…should I worry that most of the people answering the poll went for the sex change option? Hmm…just what do people think of me, anyway?

The point of no return…

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Given the direction my life has been heading lately, and the relevancy of everything I babble about here on the site, the above headline refers to the fact that I…

  1. ….am about to undergo radical plastic surgery and a sex-change operation in order to compete in the first Bridget Fonda lookalike contest.
  2. …just spent $209.75 on a one-way ticket to Seattle leaving Sat. June 16th at 12:45am and arriving at 5:02am.
  3. …live on a one-way dead-end street and can’t figure out how to go anywhere.
  4. …have just discovered and officially named a previously unknown area of land at the far end of the Homer Spit.
  5. …am desperately attempting to come up with more interesting and amusing options for this survey.

Update: The voting has been disabled for the above poll, as changes in the website have ended up borking up the poll and results. However, if I remember correctly, the majority of the tallied votes were for the Bridget Fonda lookalike contest.

I love my friends.

Microsuck

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The day Microsoft makes something that doesn’t suck will be the same day they start making vacuum cleaners.

— Anonymous

Memorial Day weekend

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This has been a really nice weekend so far. I actually ended up with a couple days off — worked Saturday at Suncoast, but that was it, so had Sunday and Monday off. Quite nice.

Took Miranda out to see The Mummy Returns on Saturday night, making my second time seeing that one in the theaters. It pretty much stays the same in my opinion — a fun flick that I enjoy, and almost as good as the first one, but a definite roller coaster ride. There are parts that are so much better than the first that I was really impressed — and parts that were so much worse that it was depressing. Ah, well…overall, pretty damn enjoyable. Unfortunately, Miranda wasn’t feeling well, and so she had to go straight home after the movie.

Jones Lake, Anchorage, AKSunday was a great day. Absolutely gorgeous weather, so I decided to go out and enjoy the sun and get some pictures of Alaska before I leave. I just picked up a nice little Kodak DX3500 digital camera earlier in the week (finally — it’s been about 8 years since I’ve had a camera), and wanted to get some shots of my home for the last 26 years before I bailed. I started by heading out to Earthquake ParkEarthquake Park, Anchorage, AK, as it’s just about a minute away from my house. There were a bunch of other families and tourists out enjoying the weekend, too, so I ended up spending a couple minutes there watching some kids play as their parents took in the displays scattered around the area. The view of Mt. Susitna Mt. Susitna, Anchorage, AK was just gorgeous, Sleeping Lady was out in full splendor, with just a scattering of light fluffy clouds up in the sky.

After Earthquake Park, I headed downtown, and discovered somewhat to my dismay that while downtown Anchorage looks gorgeous from afar, it’s still a bit too early in the year to get any really nice shots of it. None of the flowers have started poking up from the various planters, and the grass is still just coming in, so it’s still got a lot of brown mixed in with the green. No huge biggie, though — another couple weeks should take care of that pretty nicely. After a while I ran down to Village Inn to get some grub, then went home to rest for a bit.

That evening I went out to the valley to hit a bonfire party that Danielle was throwing. I met up with Danielle, Christina, and some of their friends from the valley (Sparky, Victor, Carlos, Dorothy, Earl, Dave, and a couple others who’s names I can’t remember right now) at Danielle’s house, then we all caravaned Heading out, Mat-Su Valley, AK out to the Palmer Hay Flats refuge for the bonfire. The evening was just beautiful, and the area was absolutely gorgeous — a valley down at the base of some hills, with the sunset reflecting off the mountains in the distance. I took some shots to try and put together a panorama of the view, if I can get them stitched together decently in Photoshop I’ll see if I can get the final result posted here.

After starting the fire Sparky, Bonfire, Mat-Su Valley, AK in the time-honored bonfire tradition of piling up a bunch of wood and dousing it with lighter fluid, we all just spent a nice evening standing around, talking, munching on some grub, and attempting to prevent Earl from blowing anything up. As few of us were much into drinking at all — I brought a few Smirnoff Ice‘s to drink, but only had two over the course of the evening, and few of the others brought anything — Victor, Sparky, Dorothy, Bonfire, Mat-Su Valley, AK it was a very nice mellow evening. We even had the troopers stop by a couple times to check on us, and they basically told us just to make sure we got the fire put out when we left — one of them even said that this was the kind of party they like to see. It was pretty cool — for all the harassment the police get just because they’re in a position of authority, it’s been very rare that I’ve had any sour dealings with them at all.

Eventually Bonfire, Mat-Su Valley, AKit got to be about two in the morning, and we all decided it was time to head out — a couple of us had to make it back into Anchorage before we crashed out, and everyone was starting to get tired. So, after a good few minutes trying to put out the bonfire (quite a chore in itself), we all headed home. The drive back in was wonderful, too — I just set the cruise control for the speed limit, and cruised on in. As most people out for the weekend were going to be coming back into town today at the end of the three day weekend, I didn’t have much traffic to deal with, and only saw a couple cops on the way in. Made it home a little after 3am and crashed out.

So now it’s Monday, the last day of the weekend, and I’m pretty much just spending the day relaxing here at home. I’ve got four more days of work at GCI, then the next two weeks will be the final push to get everything packed up and ready to go before I leave state…that countdown just keeps going….

Mars needs a facelift!

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Cydonian faceThis just in — It seems that our nearest neighbor in the Solar System, and most possible target for future colonization, is in dire need of a facelift!

NASA has recently released photographs of the famous Cydonian face on Mars that show that one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have yet of alien intelligence is in danger of being eradicated from our Solar System. While NASA’s scientists have always been quick to deny that the face is actually a face (how foolish — what else could it be?), scientists worldwide not under the thumb of the U.S. Government have spend untold hours debunking the “theory” that NASA and the US Government want us to believe — that the Face does not exist, and is merely a product of poor photography combined with human imagination.

Well, I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t take much imagination at all for me to see that the above picture quite clearly shows a face. And do they really expect that the American public is so stupid as to believe that after sending countless satellites into space, the Voyager probe to the stars, and who knows what else (I would list placing men on the Moon, but that has long since been uncovered as a hoax), that the Viking 1 and 2 landers had such poor equipment on board that they would mangle a random collection of peaks and valleys into looking like we know the Face to look?

Lately, however, some more disturbing news has leaked out of NASA. As can be plainly seen in the images below, the Face is being destroyed!

Three faces

The only question now is how is this happening? The three pictures were taken within the space of less than 30 years — from the Viking missions in 1975 and 1976 to the most recent flyover by the Mars Global Surveyor in 2001 — and show a frightening amount of destruction. While we know that Mars has an atmosphere inhospitable to human life (or, at least, so we’ve been told all these years), it isn’t so horrid as to account for that much degradation in such a short span of time. So what could be responsible for this?

The only answer I can come up with is that the Face is being deliberately destroyed to hide its existence from us! This single image — released by NASA itself — does more to prove that the Government has been hiding information from us (either about its own capabilities, or about its involvement with extraterrestrial intelligence) for years than anything previously found! I don’t know who is destroying the Face — or how (though it could either be through their own means, if you assume that NASA’s claims about the moon landing are true, and we can travel between the planets; or through the assistance of alien intelligences in collaboration with our government) — but the why can be easily guessed.

To keep us ignorant.

The face has been a thorn in the side of those in control ever since the pictures leaked out to the world after the Viking landers took them — incontrovertible proof of alien intelligence — and they must have been working since its discovery to destroy it so that they could ‘debunk’ it as just another jumble of rocks.

I feel that it is imperative that we refuse to let this continue. Contact your representatives, senators, whomever, but let it be known that we will no longer allow ourselves to be led, that we are not the pawns that our so-called ‘leaders’ want us to be!

Let the truth come out!

 

Okay, okay. So I’ve been watching too much X-Files recently. The picture of the three faces actually comes from a fascinating article on NASA’s website about the formation in question, and how the increased resolution of today’s cameras (and not erosion, alien conspiracies, or the like) are giving a clearer picture of the ‘face’ on Mars. Neat stuff, but it triggered my brain, and I had to get this out. Hey, it was fun!