FRI 11 JAN 2002

Interesting Job...

We're wondering if they took this as a challenge....

Is It Real, or Is It Just the Web?
National Guardsman shoots self in ass while patrolling airport. Computer virus distribution classified as hate crime. New product improves taste of semen. Bill Gates shot dead in 1999.

Web distorts. You decide.

Update
Replaced contemporary American flag in sidebar with less ambiguous historical American flag.

Thought for the Day
"Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Ring Around the Scholar

Pranksters at MIT looped the dome of the creatively named "Building 10" with a giant banner in the image of Tolkien's One Ring, right down to the Elvish inscription. I had a link to the article where I snagged the photo above, but unfortunately it seems to have expired. (Thanks to El Juno for this one!)

Apple's New Fruit Apple Computer recently released a redesigned iMac. The new look has gotten a lot of positive responses, but frankly I don't like it very much. To me it resembles some kind of plastic kitchen appliance of uncertain function that you'd find at a yard sale or, as my friend the ShanMonster described it, "an ugly lamp." Still, being a long-time Macintosh user, I hope Apple's latest offering pans out well for them. I'd like to see it in a black color scheme, which might make it look less like a relic from 1970.

The new iMac

The Case of the Collapsing Cupboard
This woman decides to buy a new cupboard that you have to assemble yourself. Back home she reads the instructions carefully and assembles the cupboard in the bedroom. It looks really neat. Then, a train passes and the whole cupboard collapses.

Thinking that she must have done *something* wrong she re-re-reads the instructions and re-re-assembles the cupboard. Then, a train passes and the cupboard collapses again.

Now, fed up she calls customer service. She is told that this is quite impossible and that they'll send along a technician to have a look. The technician arrives and assembles the cupboard. Then, a train passes and the cupboard collapses.

Completely baffled by this unexpected event, the technician decides to reassemble the cupboard and get inside it to see whether he can find out what causes the cupboard to collapse.

At this point, the woman's husband comes home, sees the cupboard and says: "That's a nice looking cupboard", and opens it.

Says the technician: "You won't believe me, but I'm standing here waiting for the train".

Thought for the Day
"I could not believe in a God that could not dance."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Thought for the Day
"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window."
-- Steve Wozniak

Slogan of the Month

Faith and Race
The sign in front of a little church we pass on our way to work currently bears this message:

"God can make you whiter than snow."

We have to wonder if they really thought that one through....

Dream
Last night I dreamed that my wife and I were driving along a dirt road out in the country. Beside the road was a long wooden shed-like building with a tin roof overhang. Under the overhang were some old farm equipment, small stacks of lumber, and Robin Williams, who was sitting on the ground surrounded by loose sheets of paper, writing something. We stopped the car and said hello to him. He was quite personable and friendly. Always looking to impress a fellow humorist, I made some kind of witty remark that I don't remember now. Williams said, "That's not bad. Why don't you and your wife join me at the football game at 6:30?" He handed us a couple of tickets, which we accepted even though we don't like football, because hey, it's Robin Williams.

We spent most of the rest of the dream trying to locate the stadium. We finally got there, but I don't think we ever made it inside to see the football game. We kept looking for Robin Williams outside, but we never saw him in the huge crowd.

Thought for the Day
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
-- Carl Gustav Jung

A Card for That Special Co-Worker

Update
Added Salana to Cagers.
(Salana lives closer to where I do than most other Cagers, so she's one of the few I've been lucky enough to meet in person.)

Another Movie Review
I received a number of DVDs for Christmas, some of which were "on the list" and some of which weren't. One of the ones that wasn't on the list was Jurassic Park III.

Now, I don't mean to insult the kind folks who gave us this movie, because on the surface it would seem to be a good choice. I've got the first two Jurassic Park movies on video, and I've always liked dinosaurs. And there are some really good dinosaurs in this movie. However, apart from the dinosaurs, the movie pretty much sucked.

In the movie, a pair of strange and prevaricating divorced parents decide to go to an island full of dinosaurs to find their lost son Eric. Part of the plan involves kidnapping Dr. Allen Grant (Sam Neill), whom one can't help but think was also kidnapped to be in the movie itself, as he seems to be about the only human character with any glimmer of intelligence. OK, the kid is pretty smart, too, although it's hard to imagine how he acquired this trait considering the mental deficiency of his alleged parents.

I suppose what disappointed me most about the movie is that the parents never got eaten. The father is a no-account bullshit artist, and the mother does nothing except make stupid comments, yell when she should be quiet, and gaze wistfully at the camera for no apparent reason. I kept waiting for them to get crunched, but it never happened. The kid would have been better off being adopted by Dr. Grant than stuck with those two moronic bozos. Instead we get a happy sappy Hollywood ending with a poignant family reunion reminiscent of The Parent Trap, except with flesh-eating reptiles. Final verdict: thumbs down.

The Cow from Ohio
The only cow in a small town in Arkansas stopped giving milk. The people did some research and found they could buy a cow up in Mansfield, Ohio, for only $200.00.

They bought the cow from Ohio and it was wonderful. It produced lots of milk all of the time, and the people were pleased and very happy. They decided to acquire a bull to mate with the cow and produce more cows like it. They would never have to worry about their milk supply again. They bought a bull and put it in the pasture with their beloved cow.

However, whenever the bull came close to the cow, the cow would move away. No matter what approach the bull tried, the cow would move away from the bull and he could not succeed in his quest.

The people were very upset and decided to ask the Vet what to do. They told the Vet what was happening. "Whenever the bull approaches our cow, she moves away. If he approaches from the back, she moves forward. When he approaches her from the front, she backs off. An approach from the side and she walks away to the other side."

The Vet thought about this for a minute and asked, "Did you buy this cow in Ohio?"

The people were dumbfounded, since they had never mentioned where they bought the cow. "You are truly a wise Vet," they said. "How did you know we got the cow in Ohio?"

The Vet replied, with a distant look in his eye, "My wife is from Ohio."

Thought for the Day
"Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others."
-- Albert Camus

Thought for the Day
"Energy is eternal delight."
-- William Blake

Snow!

Myst frolics in the snow.

It started snowing last night, and it kept snowing until this morning, when it paused briefly and then started snowing again. We've got at least ten inches on the ground right now. It was the first time the kittens had seen snow, and Myst just loved it. Marble thought it was interesting, but Myst positively flipped. She was jumping and sliding, sticking her face in the fluffy whiteness, running in a flurry of snowdust and jumping around some more. We decided to give her the snowbunny award. Anyway, we're pretty much snowed in at the moment, but there's a fire in the stove, cornbread in the pan, and chili in the pot. And we get an unexpected day off work. Things could be worse....

Thought for the Day
"I think a straight line does not exist. There is no such thing as a straight line in painting."
-- Willem de Kooning

The Bush Economy

Good vs. Evil in Movieland
Before Ralph Bakshi botched up Lord of the Rings, he put out an odd little animated film called Wizards. I saw it when it came out in 1977, but I hadn't seen it again until very recently, when I received the videotape for Christmas (it doesn't seem to be available on DVD). I wasn't sure if I'd still like it -- sometimes things you enjoy as a high-school senior aren't quite as appealing when you reach your early forties -- but it turned out to be entertaining, imaginative, and funny, with an interesting range of animation styles. There are also some fairly obvious parallels with LoTR. Both stories focus on the struggle between sharply defined good and evil forces, and both take place in worlds populated by wizards, elves, and nasty monsters. In LoTR, Frodo and Sam must journey deep into the dark land of Mordor to destroy an evil ring and save the world from the horrible Dark Lord Sauron. In Wizards, Avatar and his companions must journey deep into the dark land of Scortch to destroy an evil film projector and save the world from horrible rotoscoping effects. Too bad Bakshi didn't quit while he was ahead.

Thought for the Day
"The factory of the future will have two employees: a man and a dog. The man's job will be to feed the dog. The dog's job will be to prevent the man from touching any of the automated equipment."
-- Warren G. Bennis

Happy New Year from Creative Dynamix

René Magritte -- The Great War (1964)

The painting above celebrates one of the best gifts we recieved this Christmas -- a large hardbound "coffee-table" book of surrealist art. It's called Essential Surrealists, edited by Tim Martin, and it covers over a dozen artists including Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and the creator of the above painting, René Magritte. If Magritte's work strikes you as uncannily "Beatle-ish", it's no accident -- one of his biggest fans was Sir Paul McCartney, and elements of Magritte's style show up in the Beatles' movie Yellow Submarine as well as in the Apple Records logo.
Many thanks to Holden and Mary Lea for this wonderful book.

Update: LoTR Review
Added Frodo Lives! -- a review of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings/The Fellowship of the Ring movie -- to Explositions.

One Bookmark to Rule Them All
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie is obviously generating a lot of marketing. One of the little things I got for Christmas was a bookmark with a picture of Bilbo (Ian Holm) from the film. The bookmark has a tassle on it, and attached to the tassle is a little gold-colored trinket made in the image of the One Ring. It struck me as rather amusing that the bookmark would be adorned with a cheap mass-produced imitation of the single most powerfully evil item in Middle Earth. I was even more amused when I read a cautionary statement on the back of the bookmark, which caused the following scene to spring to mind:

"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering voice.
"No," said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough:

Caution: This product is not recommended for very young children as rings can present a choking hazard. ...

Burning Issues
As if it had nothing better to do, the government has banned all foods made with hemp derivatives because they might contain trace amounts of THC. Never mind that the amounts are so minuscule that you'd turn into a lab rat before you could catch a buzz. Meanwhile, in an equally sensible effort to protect the public from potential danger, religious fundies are burning Harry Potter books. It is unknown whether the books were printed on hemp-based paper.

Thought for the Day
"If the past is, as they say, a different country, then it follows that the future must be a different country also."
-- D. R. Porterfield

Thought for the Day
"Paranoia is the belief in a hidden order behind the visible."
-- Malaclypse the Elder

Praise the Lord!

A still from the newly released Lord of the Rings movie

I've always been a big fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, so I was both excited and nervous when I heard of Peter Jackson's ambitious project to bring the books to life in a live-action film, the first installment of which was released today. Excited because I love the story, and nervous because of previous unsuccessful attempts to bring that story to the big screen. Ralph Bakshi's dismal animated failure of 1978 sprang to mind immediately.

However, I was pleased to note that according to early reviews, the movie doesn't suck. By nearly all accounts, it is well conceived, well produced, well acted, and generally well done. The stills I've seen from the film are stunning in their beauty and realism, although I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Tom Bombadil will not appear in the production. Hobbit afficianados, as well as ordinary mortals with an interest in the movie, may wish to peruse this site for further information and commentary from a variety of sources. Items of interest include submitted reviews of the film, why conservative Christians don't hate LoTR as much as Harry Potter, and an examination of possible technologies underlying the One Ring.

The New McCarthyism
Attorney General John Ashcroft is sounding more and more like the paranoid anti-Communist Senator of the 1950s, Joe McCarthy. Don't believe it? Take the quiz.

Thought for the Day
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
-- Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring