Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Happy π Day!

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It’s π day (3/14). Whee!

Randomness:

  • I’m in the last week of the quarter, touching up my last paper for English (no final, yay!) and cramming through the last few sections of Math in order to be ready for the final on Tuesday. Hence, why things have been relatively quiet lately. There has been action in the ‘eclinkticism’ sidebar (also known as my del.icio.us account, but a definite dearth of actual content. So it goes.

  • I’ve sent off my one birthday wish to my parents, and they’ve said they’ll consider it. Yay! This, of course, now has me wishing that my birthday was just a little bit earlier in the summer. Heh. In any case, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’m not, however, posting just what the birthday wish was, as I don’t want to jinx anything.

    • Said birthday, by the way, is May 3rd, at which point I’ll be turning 33. The same age Jesus was when he died, according to tradition. Should anyone want to get me anything (including, but not limited to, friendly e-mails wishing me well, cards, books, music, money, a 30″ Apple Cinema Display…y’know, little things…), I won’t complain.
  • Thanks to a random Google search, my first girlfriend dropped me a note to say hi and get back in touch. Pretty mindblowing, but it’s been a lot of fun catching up with her.

  • As we move into spring (finally!), I’m looking forward to getting out of the house a bit more over the spring/summer festival season and finding some more good photo opportunities. Events that I’m hoping to show up at over the coming months (pending days off from work, financing, and other random things that might get in the way), some of which Prairie is looking forward to accompanying me to, others of which she’ll smile indulgently, roll her eyes, and pat me on the butt as I walk out the door:

    1. Sakura Con 2006 (Saturday 3/25): Seattle’s anime convention. While I’m not huge into anime (I’ve enjoyed a lot of what I’ve seen, but I’m no big fan), I’m planning on heading down to wander around on Saturday, when they’re having their costume/cosplay contest. Should be lots of fun costumes wandering around.

    2. Emerald City Comicon (Saturday 4/1): Seattle’s comic book convention. Again, I’m not a huge comic fan (my collection consists of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, Alan Moore’s Watchmen and V for Vendetta, the Clerks comics, and issues 1-10 of The Tick). However, I did have fun taking photos when I stopped by last year’s ComiCon, and hope to do the same this year. Again, I’m aiming for Saturday, to take advantage of the day’s costume contest.

    3. Norwescon 29 (Friday 4/12 – Sunday 4/14): I’ve been hearing about Norwescon since I came down to Seattle, as many of the regulars at the_vogue are also big into sci-fi, fantasy, role playing, and all the other various forms of entertainment that can be found at a fantasy convention. This year, I have a few friends that have been planning on going, so I figured it could be fun to take the weekend and actually go to this thing to see what I thought. Should be interesting….

    4. Folklife (Saturday 5/27): This will be my third jaunt to Folklife. I’ve got a small set of photos from 2004 and a larger set from 2005, we’ll see how many I come home with this year. Planning on Saturday as a definite day, other days may happen depending on scheduling (there are other people at work who also want to hit Folklife, we’ll just have to see how the weekend works out).

    5. Seattle Pride Parade (Sunday 6/25): Unfortunately, this one’s questionable right now, as that’s inventory weekend at work and the schedule is marked “NO OFFS” for this day. I’ve mentioned (ahem…whined…) about this to my manager, but I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to make it or not. A shame, as I’ve been there in 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005.

    6. Bumbershoot (Saturday 8/2 – Monday 8/4): A possibility, but questionable at this point. Prairie and I skipped last years, and may end up skipping this year also. If it weren’t enough that ticket prices keep getting higher and they’ve dropped Friday from the festival schedule, we’re looking into the possibility of taking a 2-week trip down to California in September, so timing and finances may not allow adding Bumbershoot to the mix. Until that’s confirmed, though, it’s still a tentative on my list.

And…I think that pretty much covers everything for now.

Oh, one last thing. Battlestar Galactica just wrapped up their second season. Oh. Wow. So good. If you’re watching the show, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not watching it…well, you should be. Grab Season One from Amazon or Netflix, and Season Two from iTunes, sit your butt down, and watch the best sci-fi to grace the small screen in years.

Okay. Now I’m done.

Vidal on Oscars and Politics

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One of these days I’m actually going to start reading more of Gore Vidal’s work, as each time I’ve run across him (beginning with his role as the Democratic incumbent facing down up and coming right-winger Bob Roberts in Tim Robbins’ excellent political satire), I’ve found him fascinating and incredibly intelligent.

There’s a two part interview with Vidal in TruthDig conducted just before the Oscars that has some wonderful quips in it. Part one looks primarily at the then-upcoming Oscars:

If [Brokeback Mountain] were to win an Oscar, would it be a step forward in tolerance? How important is Hollywood in this equation?

Well, it never has been, and I don’t see why it should be suddenly now. That it was made at all and that it was made so honestly and so well is a good thing, better than to make a mess out of it, or not try at all….

Look, homophobia is fed into every child in the United States at birth. It is unrelenting, it never lets up. They asked a whole raft of high school boys across the country a couple years ago, one of those polls about what they would most like to be in life, and what … they would hate to be, and so forth, and what they would most hate to be was homosexual.

There wasn’t anyone, not one, who just skipped the question. They all said “oh no, that’s the worst thing you could be.”

To get over that training, that’s generation after generation. And it has not done the character of our nation much good. And that’s why we are a joke to the rest of the world, because we carry on about sexual matters everyone else has forgotten about.

Part two concentrates on more political matters:

This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against the Palestinian Oscar nominee, “Paradise Now,” with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with “terrorists.”

Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can’t repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we’ve just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we’re not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we’re pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we’ve been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only “homeland security.” But there’s no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will!

Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels….

Oh it’s just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?

(via Slog)

iTunes “Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk from the album Industrial Revolution, 2nd Edition (1977, 3:18).

Episcopalian and Anglican Superheroes

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A brief rundown of comic-book superheroes of either Episcopalian or Anglican beliefs, sourced from The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters, and pointed out to me by dad.

  • The Beast/Hank McCoy (Episcopalian)
  • Phoenix/Jean Grey (Episcopalian)
  • Archangel/Warren Worthington III (Episcopalian)
  • Psylocke/Betsy Braddock (Anglican)
  • Captain Britain/Brian Braddock (Anglican)
  • Scarecrow of Romney Marsh/Rev. Dr. Christopher Syn (Anglican)
  • Batman/Bruce Wayne (Episcoplain/Catholic (lapsed))

iTunes “Malaway” by Dario G from the album Sunmachine (1998, 7:18).

No Woman, No Fly

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Just added to the Jason Webley Bootlegs collection: No Woman, No Fly (5.1Mb .mp3). The audio quality isn’t the greatest (with Jason’s penchant for going from soft to screaming in nanoseconds, the recording’s a bit overdriven in places), but it’s up.

Thanks to usernamenumber for posting the .mp3, and to RobTav63 for help with the lyrics.

Lyrics follow behind the cut.

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Ultraviolet is, apparently, Ultrastupid

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Milla Jovovich’s latest film, which I babbled about a couple weeks ago, has opened without advance review screenings (never a good sign). Now that a reviewer has been able to see it…looks like this one is going to be a renter.

Another Friday, another abominable movie that wasn’t screened for critics before it opens.

…it’s called “Ultraviolet.” […] It is overstyled, deafening and incoherent.

Violet…brawls with government thugs, twists and flips through the air in slow motion — something we’ve all seen so many times before — dodges bullets and fires off untold amounts of her own. Watching scene after scene of her taking on dozens of men at once, with techno music pounding in the background, quickly becomes repetitive. It’s also dreadfully self-serious, with none of the self-knowing sense of humor that made similar sequences in the “Kill Bill” movies so much more fun.

“Ultraviolet” wants desperately to be a provocative, high-concept action thriller. It apparently is trying to say something about fear and terrorism, paranoia and racism. But it looks more like a shampoo commercial.

Can’t say that I’m surprised, though it’s a bit of a bummer. The trailer looked quite pretty…but apparently, that’s about all that Ultraviolet has going for it.

I’ll still probably rent it, though. C’mon — Milla kicking butt can’t be all bad, right? ;)

iTunes “Mercury and Solace” by BT from the album Movement in Still Life (2000, 5:06).

On Coining Euphemisms

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Just a quick word of advice.

When deciding to coin a euphemism, one might want to find out if the phrase in question has already been appropriated for something else.

For example, this discussion in the Flickr Battlestar Galactica group:

spincycle: “…I do think we’ll be getting back to an Adama-Laura conflict/resolution story fairly soon (either this season or early next). They’ve been chummy lately, time to toss that salad a bit.”

Gaudior: “I’d like to see them ‘toss the salad’ (my new euphamism)!”

Hee. I’m amused.

For those not in the know, ‘toss the salad’ is already a euphemism for a particular sex act. Here’s a slightly Not Safe For Work definition (no nudity, just text descriptions of a non-mainstream kink).

iTunes “Del Davis Tree Farm” by Primus from the album Tales from the Punchbowl (1996, 3:23).

Queen! (But who’s Paul Rodgers?)

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Queen (plus Paul Rodgers) is going to be performing in Seattle!

Who’s Paul Rodgers? Aside from the obvious answer of “the guy singing because Freddy‘s not around anymore,” that is. Apparently, he’s had a solo career along with being the vocalist for three bands — Free, Bad Company, and The Firm. Bad Company is the only one of those three that I’ve ever heard of.

Hrm.

It’s a dilemma. On the one hand, I’m a long time Queen fan, and they have been one of the groups I’ve always wished I’d had a chance to see live — something I’d given up on when Freddy died. So the chance to see even 3/4 of Queen with someone else standing in is very enticing.

On the other hand…it’s not Freddy. Will the show still sound right? Does Paul have the stage presence that Freddy did (while I never saw them, I love listening to the live album ‘Live Killers‘ in large part because of the incredible rapport Freddy had with his audience)? There are sample downloads on the Queen + Paul Rodgers website, but they’re in a Windows Media format that doesn’t seem to play nice with OS X, so I can’t listen to any of them.

Ooh, wait…in the ‘Media‘ section, there are some clips in a .wmv format that does play nice in OS X. I’m…not sold. The music is right, but the vocals…I’m not sure. While I wouldn’t expect it to sound exactly like Freddy (and I really do like the job George Michael did with them a few years back…I thought he made a very impressive pseudo-Freddy), Paul’s got enough of a different timbre that it makes it a little jarring to my ears.

No matter what, I should decide soon: the show’s on April 10th (a Monday night), and tickets are a little painful (ranging from $50 to $200.00!). Decisions, decisions, decisions…

iTunes “Dreamer’s Ball (Live)” by Queen from the album Live Killers (1979, 3:42).