Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Rant

  • Trigger warning

    It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment.

    There, yes, I said it. It’s a poorly-worded, grammatically ambiguous (at best) concession of a “right” that is neither inalienable nor logical, written into the Bill of Rights by white men of privilege who also believed it was acceptable to own other human beings (who they didn’t even conceive of as fully human).

    This is the text of the Amendment:

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

    Annotated Constitution on Congress.gov

    This is some bullshit. It’s about protecting the “right” of (white) people to own weapons so they could constitute a “Militia,” on a state level as opposed to a federal military. Do you know what the purpose of the militia was, at that time?

    The answer you’re taught in school is to be a check against government tyranny, fresh on the minds of those who oh-so-recently threw off the yoke of British rule. Sure, sure, maybe.

    The real purpose of the state militias was to suppress insurrections. But, hmmmm, what sort of insurrections could they possibly have been worried about?

    Slave rebellions, of course. The white population lived in fear of insurrection from a subjugated Black population that vastly outnumbered them.

    (Naturally, there are going to be those of you who immediately try to counter with “But Shays’ Rebellion…” or “But the Whiskey Rebellion…” Don’t. Just don’t. Go read your history.)

    The main function of the militia, particularly in the southern states, was to police the slaves. Slave states were worried that without such a right spelled out in the Constitution, they would be unable to prevent insurrections by the enslaved, which to them posed the gravest threat. So the Second Amendment was adopted as a concession to the slaveholders and to preserve slavery.

    It’s a racist artifact that should have been omitted.

    Ohhhh look out, did I just engage in CRT???

    I’ll be clear: there is no inherent, inalienable right to own a gun, especially not a military-grade automatic weapon, despite what the gun perverts will tell you and despite what a bunch of racists insisted get codified in the Bill of Rights.

    The Second Amendment today is used by the gun perverts and Republicans as a shield, enabling them to do what they do best—enable (if not outright perpetrate) the mass murder of children in schools. And people in shopping malls, grocery stores, churches, at concerts, on the street, and so on. It’s sick.

    It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment.

  • No.

    With the inauguration making it official, and “real,” I had to write something.

    Right now we are in the midst of the strangest, most ridiculous moments in United States history that I’ve experienced in my lifetime—and, some say, maybe ever. I don’t know about “ever” but it certainly feels unprecedented. Perhaps people living through the Harding administration of the 1920s, or Nixon in the early ’70s, or hell even Prohibition experienced this same feeling of unreality, unease, and vaguely impending doom that we (the sane ones, anyway) are experiencing now. I don’t know.

    What I do know is, somehow we now have a “president” that I don’t believe can or should be considered legitimate. He’s a serial liar, a failed businessman, a misogynist, not terribly intelligent, (probably) a sexual predator, a racist, an Islamophobe, and generally a fascist, with the thin skin of a temperamental four year old desperately craving attention and lashing out when spurned. On top of all of that, he is very likely compromised by a foreign agency.

    He has refused to divest himself of his business interests, particularly as they relate to other countries, which raises numerous conflicts of interest and violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. He has not nor never will release his tax returns.

    He lost the popular vote by the largest margin in history, three million votes, and only squeaked into the office by the loophole provided by the electoral voting system. He now takes the oath of that office as the most unpopular incoming president in history. And now day one has been marked with a flagrant lie about the size of the inauguration crowds, quivering in the shadow cast by the Women’s March, exposing the “president’s” shambling insecurity.

    His cabinet is full of crony millionaires and billionaires, racists, extremists, and neo-Nazis with little to no real world knowledge of the jobs they have been selected for, or an active interest in tearing them down. He himself has no grasp of the magnitude of the role nor the knowledge and skills necessary to be the president, and his blundering ignorance and corruption will likely get many people killed.

    There is nothing legitimate about this presidency, the campaign of which was run on a platform of racism and lies. The interference from Russia in the process alone should have been enough to overturn the entire election, and the strong possibility of Trump being compromised and under the influence of Russia and Putin should have disqualified him completely and brought him under intense investigation. If there were enough Republicans left with any kind of a spine who weren’t desperate sycophants for power, that might have been the outcome.

    Which is why this is so surreal. It was surreal when he announced he would run, but I have to admit I enjoyed watching the Republican party tear itself apart in paroxysms of hypocrisy and degradation as he stood among them, and won. But who would have thought he would actually advance all the way to the general election and have a chance at winning? Well, the racists and the Nazis, I guess.

    But had anyone tried to pitch this entire election and outcome as a fictional plot—for a movie or a book or a TV series—it would have been instantly rejected as too implausible, too outlandish, too ridiculous to be believable. But wait! There’s a twist! There are many twists! There’s an endorsement by the KKK! The Nazis are back! The main character is stupid enough to admit to sexual assault while wearing his own wire! Wait, wait, you’re gonna love this one—it’s the Russians and they’ve successfully planted their agent in the White House with the help of hackers and—what? Too contrived?

    Except apparently it’s not, and it’s happening now. If you voted for Trump, then you’re complicit in all of this. If you didn’t vote at all, you’re complicit in all of this.

    There is no “making America great again” under Trump because he is completely out of touch with the America he is supposed to lead. His “great America” is one where the rich get huge tax cuts while the poor shoulder their burden and die for lack of healthcare. One where the rights of women and minorities are rolled back so that affluent white men won’t feel threatened. This fantasy by the way, one apparently shared largely by the Republican party, is the desperate fever dream of a scared minority of aging rich white men seemingly unable to grasp that the world is moving on without them.

    (Alternatively, the desperate fever dream of insular, under-educated whites scared to death of diversity and obsolescence.)

    I mean, listen to the rhetoric—“We’re taking America back!” Back from what? From whom? From progress? Prosperity? Oh I know—not back from, but back to… to the dark ages. Anyone who seriously thinks that things were better 50 years ago should immediately lose their computer, their phone, access to the internet, their medicine, their big screen TV and video games and everything else they take for granted that didn’t exist 50 years ago.

    And really, I’m worried that Trump will say something crazy on Twitter (again) that will have catastrophic results—or worse, his account will be hacked (again) and someone else will do that. I’m worried about the lack of concern and outright lies about a massive security breach and intrusion by Russia. I’m worried that the country as we know it—this entire grand American experiment—may well be at an end. It’s certainly not the same as it was even a year ago.

    So no, I can’t look upon this new administration with any sense of legitimacy. No, I will not look past the flagrant lies. No, I will not accept nor respect the authority of the office that respects neither the people nor the office itself. No, I will not accept the hypocrisy of people who for eight years degraded and disrespected President Obama and now demand respect and civility for their spray-tanned elderly reality TV star.

    I recognize the divide in this country, it’s very real, and divisive. But it was also heavily exploited during this election with lies and manufactured hysteria, and now the bill is coming due.

    No, I don’t want to be that America. We can do better.

  • The TV post (Spring ’11)

    I usually end up making these type of rants posts this time of year because it’s at the point where the frustration has built and I need to trip the release valve. Well, frustration and just general commentary.

    For instance, “V“: I wrote about this previously, and, well, I’ve bailed. I don’t know what happened to the production or writing of the second season, but when a major plotline is the Visitors’ obsession with finding and destroying the human soul—well, I should hope the ludicrous nature of this is evident in itself.

    Plus, the “science fiction” aspect of the show finally diverged entirely into “fantasy.” Last week’s episode highlighted the human resistance creating a “DNA bomb” that would, I guess, scramble a person’s DNA (which the Visitors are purportedly collecting). Um, what? I didn’t know we had such crazy technology. And never mind the Visitor method of collecting DNA samples from humans: giant spiked Iron Maiden-looking devices tortuously exsanguinating the victim for a single small vial’s worth of DNA. Um, hello? We have this advanced technology known as a “cotton swab” which does the same thing.

    So I’m done with “V”.

    That’s the big one. I’m still watching and enjoying (to various degrees) “Hawaii Five-0”, “The Event”, “Law & Order (Various Flavors)”, “American Idol”, and the other usual suspects. I think I doze through the various “CSI”s.

    “Hawaii Five-0” I enjoy because there’s not a lot of thinking involved, and it looks good. My brother has the amusing observation that they are some sort of crazy Gestapo force but I suppose to a certain extent that’s what makes it entertaining.

    “The Event” is definitely filling in certain roles left vacant by both “Lost” and “24”, a fairly decent show (not dragging out the mysteries too much like “Lost” did) though lately the editing or something has been really choppy; when they jump from plotline to plotline, it’s never quite obvious what timeframe they’re dealing with, as you go from one storyline that’s taking place in the middle of the day to one in the middle of the night.

    I finally concluded that each thread must be self-contained and not happening concurrently—otherwise someone producing that show has to get their editing and sense of time straightened out.

    Not too much to say about “American Idol” yet other than, I’m glad the assholes were booted last week, and damn, that Hailey girl acts like she’s pole dancing on stage. My nickname for her is Stripper Pole.

    And the first rule of this season’s Idol drinking game: take a shot every time Steven Tyler uses the word “beautiful.”

  • Top hated internet words

    Not surprisingly, I had to comment on this.

    Topping the list of words most likely to make web users “wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard” was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system.

    “Blogosphere”, the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; “blog” itself was third; “netiquette”, or Internet etiquette, came fourth and “blook”, a book based on a blog, was fifth.

    “Cookie”, a file sent to a user’s computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while “wiki”, a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.

    I can only really get behind two on this list: “blogosphere” and “folksonomy”. I’d never heard of “blook” until now, and I’ll continue to pretend it doesn’t exist.

    I hate “blogosphere”, and I hate more that I’ve actually used it in conversation and writing. “Blog” I’m good with. I love “blog”. “Blog” is succinct, and people pretty much know what it means. “Blogosphere”, on the other hand, is just… is just… yeah. How about just “online community” instead?

    I thought “folksonomy” was dumb the first time I saw it, and I continue to pretend it doesn’t exist. Fortunately, its use seems to have dropped off significantly.

    “Wiki” I like, too. Great word. Even better than “blog”, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t get the the hate here.

    “Netiquette” and “cookie”? Seriously? Man, those ships have sailed. Like, back in 1995.

  • Lost is dead to me.

    Tonight’s lauded season finale of “Lost“? Yeah, there was 10, maybe 15 minutes out of the entire two hours that was any good. And those 10 or 15 minutes had to do with one thing and one thing only: revenge upon the Others.

    You want a rant? I got your rant right here…

    Spoilers ahoy.

    The Good

    I’ll just lay it out: the best (and maybe only) good few minutes of this entire season were the rescue of Sayid, Jin, and Bernard by Hurley and Sawyer. (I’m ignoring Juliet. She was pointless and they still shouldn’t trust her.)

    From Hurley running down the one guy with the VW bus (I will admit, I totally did not see that coming), to Sayid breaking the guys neck with his feet, to Sawyer shooting Roscoe even after he surrendered (“that’s for taking the boy from the raft”), all I can say is, it’s about time. I even said out loud, “That’s what I’m talking ’bout!”

    …of course, there’s still the fact that it took them two seasons to finally get revenge for the fact that the Others (despite their assertions that they’re the “good guys”) tried to kill them and kidnapped an innocent kid, but at this point I’ll take what I can get. It’s about goddamn time.

    The other good scenes? Jack finally (finally!) beating the shit out of Ben (although I think he should’ve just killed him, I really do), and Charlie messing with the Others Girls heads in the Looking Glass station. And the Looking Glass Others dying too, that was good.

    The Rest

    The rest was just… just… abominable. I’ve been ranting about bad writing on “Lost” for ages now, and this is pretty much it for me, I think. Gods, where do I start?

    The “game changer”—ah, the vaunted “game changer” that they’ve been promoting for ages now… where was that again, exactly? Was it supposed to be the whole “flash forward” (as opposed to “flashback”) that the ending revealed? Yawn. Was it supposed to be the revelation that the boat that Naomi was from isn’t from Penny Widmore? Yawn. Charlie dying? Double yawn.

    Okay, let me address these in order. The “flash forward.” Totally doesn’t work/don’t care for a number of reasons:

    • If this was supposed to be set in the future, why did Jack reference his father—who was already dead—twice? They spent two seasons beating into our heads how Jack was dealing with his father’s death to make Jack simply slip up in the “future.”
    • If this truly is the future, then why are we supposed to care? We see both Jack and Kate alive at the end, and the implication is that another survivor recently died, so we know at least three made it off the island alive… well, since the show has spent three seasons making us care pretty much about only three of the survivors (with a handful of supporting folks, and 30+ people we don’t know or care about), and two of them we see back in civilization, then I’d say game over, the ones we’re supposed to care about got back, all’s well that ends well. What? What was that? You mean, we were supposed to care about all the other survivors who we previously ignored, that Jack implies all died? Hmmm…
    • Jack’s future statements imply that calling the ship brought disaster to the survivors, just as Ben said. Only so what, we already knew that thanks to Charlie, and furthermore, how would Ben know that since he only just found out about Naomi, and again, why do we care? I mean, ABC has announced three more seasons of “Lost,” so it’s not exactly a cliffhanger if we know they’re going to drag it out until 2010…
    • Is the show going in a time travel direction now? We’ve already seen Desmond playing Quantum Leap and apparently go back in time for real, and then has future flashes about Charlie. Is present-Jack somehow aware of the “flash forward” memories? Does it matter? I can’t think of any good scenario where time travel would make any kind of sense anyhow.

    Recap: Two “future continuity” errors, and a bunch of people we don’t know or care about die anyway. Conclusion: Bad writing.

    Oh and by the way, Jack’s “beard” in the “flash forward”? Worst. Fake beard. Ever.

    The boat offshore and Naomi were not sent by Penny Widmore:

    Wow, what a shock. I totally didn’t see that coming. At all. It wasn’t telegraphed by anyone. Really. Stunning. Really.

    Say… here’s a thought… what if the ship and Naomi really had been sent by Penny? You know, following up on the whole Penny Widmore scene at the end of the second season finale? You know, to make her seem really as smart as powerful as implied? I think that would actually be more interesting. But god forbid they should try for more interesting.

    Plus, you know, the ship is what, 80 miles offshore? Well, that should only take them about, oh, 30 episodes to actually get to the island, in Lost time. That should get them through the next two seasons.

    Recap: A “surprise” twist. Because it’s the season finale and, you know, people expect twists. Yeah. Conclusion: Bad writing.

    Charlie dying:

    Most illogical, poorly contrived death scene ever. Hey, I don’t have any problem with Charlie dying, they’ve only been predicting that for half the season now, but… what? He locks himself in a small room that’s filling up with water so “rapidly” that he has time to write a message on his hand and to make sure Desmond understands what he means?

    I mean, what the hell is that? Both Charlie and Desmond swam down to the Looking Glass station! Even if the station was flooding with water ten times as fast as it was in the small room, that still would have left both of them plenty of time to swim out and back up to the surface! You know why?

    You can swim up faster than down!

    Jesus Christ, at the slow-assed pace the station was flooding (through a single small porthole, I might add), I could’ve made a sandwich and had a beer before swimming out to safety!

    Recap: Uh… why bother. Conclusion: Either bad writing, or if they wrote it so that the water was filling so fast that there was no way out for Charlie, then bad production for not making that evident. But if that was the case, why give Charlie time to write a message… eh. Bad writing.

    The rest of the episode was, frankly, forgettable.

    I think the writers have written themselves into a deep, deep hole with too many loose ends, plot twists, half-baked ideas, and random clutter to get themselves out of. I really cannot imagine any way that they could tie it all together that wouldn’t seem, well, stupid. Let’s just recap some of these anomalies:

    • A plane full of strangers who have too many mutual links in their past to be coincidence.
    • A smoke monster “security system” that appears both as a mobile cloud of black smoke and as people from your past. (It apparently reads minds.)
    • An invisible man with telekinetic powers.
    • An island with weird magnetic anomalies that no one outside can see and that no one on it can escape.
    • It heals people, too. Selectively.
    • Time travel. At least (definitively) for Desmond.
    • The Numbers. (Say, what happened to those this season?)
    • Whispering disembodied voices in the jungle.
    • A boy (Walt) with some sort of psychic powers.

    Yeah. Game over.

  • Hey Z21…

    Could you try not to ruin whatever TV show is currently broadcasting by cutting in with no warning to report on tepid election results? I mean really, that’s just inept; every other station is able to scroll the election results in a marquee on the bottom of the screen, or even shrinks the main program picture to show off the fancy graphics of same. In fact, you used to do that! What gives?

    So barring the technical ability to scroll a text overlay, maybe you could do the special reporting thing during a commercial, or at least some time when I’m not missing key points to the plot of “Law & Order.” Both shows.

    Yeah. Just a little irritating. Especially considering that the “news” of the election results was so lackluster (I already said “tepid”) that it could have waited until the 11 o’clock news anyway.

    I’m just sayin’.

  • Pop culture segue

    Don’t let the title completely fool you, this entry is a rant, as much as anything else. And don’t think that I’m some sort of pop culture otaku; I’m usually behind the curve when it comes to such things, especially music.

    But I seem to consume a fair amount of it anyway, and so here we are.

    What do I really have to say about pop culture? Read on…

    TV: American Idol

    Yes, I’m watching it, yes, you can make fun of me for it.

    Overall, I think the finalists this season are really weak, and at least half of them should never have been chosen as finalists in the first place. It’s a freakshow headed up by Sanjaya. Seriously, what were the judges thinking when they chose him for the final 24?

    The top three are Melinda, LaKisha, and Blake. My pick to win is Melinda; she’s simply the best of them, and she’s humble about it. I would’ve picked LaKisha earlier on, but she started getting arrogant and too full of herself.

    Contestants aside, the show really, really needs to let Paula Abdul go. This season is really bringing home how worthless she is to the show. All she does as a “judge” is simply parrot what the others have said or make pointless comments about how well the contestant has dressed, and her drunken-slash-stoned antics are simply embarrassing. Her time is done. They need to bring in someone who’s not an assclown.

    There’s really not much more to be said, other than some snarky comments about some of the others…

    • Haley (who was mercifully eliminated last week) only got as far as she did because of her skimpy, revealing outfits. I’m surprised that even got her as far as it did; she’s simply a terrible singer.
    • Phil—dude, the bald look doesn’t work on you. At all. Combine that with the pale, deathly-ill look you seem to be sporting… let’s just say the initials for the nickname I have for him are “C.P.” Plus, he’s a terrible singer also.
    • Chris Sligh—wow, I’ve never seen anyone look like Sideshow Bob in real life before. Except for the weight part.

    TV: 24

    This season has turned out to be weak. Not as weak as the third season—I’m not sure they can get that low again—but coming off the success of last season, it just doesn’t hold up. Which is too bad, since the premise, previews, and first episode all seemed promising.

    But I just can’t buy into the premise that Jack, who was incarcerated and tortured in a Chinese prison for the past (nearly) two years, can walk off the plane and step right into such a physically demanding role and leadership position of CTU as if no time at all had transpired. It should simply be physically impossible.

    Also, the season is largely a retread of season two (which was strong, perhaps the strongest of all of them): the threat of nuclear bombs by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. One even goes off. Jack reappears from an absence to save the day. Nefarious forces at the White House attempt to remove President Palmer from power. Et cetera, et cetera.

    TV: Lost

    I’ve avoided doing any more extended ranting on “Lost” since last fall, mostly because I don’t want to become a cliché of myself. (Not to say I’m not already, but that’s a different blog entry…) Also because the quality of the season picked up since the terrible first six, but also because I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the series in general.

    After last week’s episode, just a few of the things that are bugging me:

    • Why did they neuter Jack? He sucks these days, and he had some of lamest lines ever. “She’s under my protection.” What?? Who says stuff like that? Is this some weird reversion to Middle Ages feudal dialect? And the end, when he’s babbling about trusting Juliet, “looked into her eyes” etc.—extraordinarily lame, and I was going to comment that he’s a fool to trust her when sure enough, they cut to the Juliet-as-traitor-betrayer flashback. Jack sucks.
    • Speaking of Juliet, can’t the writers make up their minds about her? They seem to be trying awful hard to make her a sympathetic character to the viewer but then they blow it. We all know she can’t be trusted, ever. So why waste screen time on it?
    • Sayid is the smartest person on the island, and he’s always right. Isn’t it about time (after nearly three seasons) that they start working that angle rather than just ignoring him? They need to kill off a bunch of losers and let Sayid take charge.

    Basically, I’m to the point where my suspension of disbelief has come crashing down. While I’ve enjoyed the season more than when it started, I think the producers and writers have dropped the ball big-time and have a convoluted mess that keeps getting compounded with bad writing.

    TV (General)

    Everyone keeps telling me how I should be watching “Heroes” and “Battlestar Galactica.” Apparently those are perfect for the geeky/sci-fi kind of person that I am, and they’re really good. I think I pretty much missed the boat on “Battlestar,” but maybe I can catch up on “Heroes” during summer reruns…

    Comics: Y: The Last Man

    The coolest thing I’ve discovered about the Deschutes Public Library in the last six months is that they have a decent collection of comic trade paperbacks; I’ve been going through and reading comic series that I missed the first time around.

    “Y: The Last Man” is one of them—the library has the complete set of trades (though the series is still ongoing). The premise: all the males in the world (technically, all mammals with a Y chromosome) are wiped out in a single day by a mysterious plague. All, that is, but one man and his male capuchin monkey. So it’s a post-apocalyptic type series, following the last man (whose name is “Yorick”) as he copes with being the last, and how that fits in with how the remaining women of the world deal with the crisis.

    It’s really good, utterly non-superhero, and for mature readers only. The trades are all fairly quick reads, but you’ll want to go back and read them again. Excellent stuff.

    Incidentally, the creator and writer of the series, Brian K. Vaughn, was recently hired to be a writer on “Lost.”

    Comics (General)

    “Fables” is a truly excellent comic series, also available in trade paperback form at the library and also an entirely non-superhero premise. In some ways it reminds me of Alan Moore’s beyond-brilliant “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (not the movie. Never the movie), in that the characters are drawn from the literary (and public domain) world of fable and fiction.

    Pretty much any other comics-related stuff I could say I already said here.

    Books: Cell

    I read Stephen King’s Cell in something like four days. It’s that good and that quick a read. It’s also the kind of book that will make you seriously think about throwing away your cellphone. I won’t go quite that far… yet… but I’m thinking it would be prudent to watch other people to make sure they’re not going crazy on their cellphones before answering mine.

    What makes it especially good is that it’s not one of the marathon-length books King often writes; it’s straightforward, fast-paced, well-plotted, suspenseful, and graphic as hell. Some of his tightest writing I’ve read in awhile. I loved it.

    It’s basically King’s contribution/foray into the apocalyptic zombie genre. Since I followed it up with the “Y: The Last Man” comics, I guess maybe I’m on an apocalyptic binge… maybe I’ll seek out some zombie novels.

    Books (General)

    I’ve currently got three books going: Code by Lawrence Lessig (that link’s actually a cheat; I’m linking to the revised edition, because that’s more relevant, but the one I’m reading is the original edition published in 1999), Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, and Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross.

    Code is dense and thoughtful and sometimes a chore to slog through. Extraordinary Origins is light and interesting and parceled out into perfect bite-sized chunks; good stuff for the casual history buff. I’ve just started Singularity Sky this weekend but so far it’s promising; it seems to be a post-modern blend of hard science fiction with space opera with post-Singularity stuff (duh, from the title!).

    I keep eyeing my bookshelf, fingering through books I haven’t yet read. Beer brewing books, Vernor Vinge, Patrick O’Brian, Rudy Rucker, Stephen Baxter, Stephen King, some classics… it goes on. A reading binge is imminent now that TV is getting close to winding down, I think. So many books, so little time.

    Of course, if I were sticking to the “pop culture” theme with books, that probably means I’d have to stick to mainstream bestsellers. I think the last time I read a mainstream bestseller other than a Stephen King was a few years ago with The Da Vinci Code, which I reviewed. I wasn’t favorable.

    Movies

    Actually, when it comes to movies, I suck these days. I hardly ever see them in the theater anymore and I’m simply behind on what’s current. What’s worse is that this is a drool-inducing year of movies for me:

    • “300” – which I must make an effort to see while it’s still in the theaters.
    • “Spider-Man 3”
    • “Transformers”
    • “Live Free or Die Hard”
    • “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”

    Those are kind of the “must see” movies on my wishlist. Other movies which would be cool to see but don’t have that urgency include “Grindhouse,” “Shrek the Third,” “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” “The Simpsons Movie,” and “Ocean’s 13.”

    Yes, they’re all geeky movies and/or sequels. What? Did you think I was gonna go all Pavlov’s Dogs on something like “Georgia Rule” or “Miss Potter”?

    Of course, take it all with a grain of salt. I haven’t even seen “Casino Royale” yet. I suck.

    Music

    What do I know? I mostly listen to the radio and have a handful of CDs (nothing current). If you’re looking for music advice/wisdom/humor/whatever, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

  • Comic book rant II

    Okay, it’s been a good long while since I unleashed a comic book rant here and got my geek on. If you don’t read comic books, or don’t care, or whatever, you can safely pass this by. Otherwise, expect this to go long, and you may even be a little embarrassed for me. :)

    Full-on rant after the jump…

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  • More Lost braindump

    No, this won’t be quite the rant I did last week, just thoughts since watching tonight’s episode of “Lost.” In particular I thought tonight’s Eko-centric episode was far better than last week’s, but most of this is just braindump. Maybe some ranting. And oh yeah, huge spoilers.

    Huge spoilers ahead, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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  • Lost rant (four episodes in)

    Okay, I’ve managed to hold out for the first four episodes of “Lost” this season, but after tonight I couldn’t resist it any longer. It’s a rant. It’s gonna be spoilerish, and long-winded, usual disclaimers apply, etc. etc. Only click through if you’re ready.

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