Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Planet Earth: Mountains

Royale bought me an amazing Christmas (now for Jews!!!) present: the complete Discovery DVD set for the series Planet Earth.

We watched the first episode, Pole To Pole, in Illinois together and it was incredible.

I've decided to blog the next episode, Mountains, to share with you this incredible series. If I can, I'll try to rip some screen caps later and edit them into the post.

300 feet below sea level a chain of young volcanoes are forming along a deep gash in the Earth in Ethiopia where continents are pulling apart. Vivid, bright orange lava shots; 70,000,000 years ago this area was flat. Volcanoes spewed up huge mountains.

You know what, this is too amazing to keep interrupting with typing. I'll get back to you at the end.


...


Wow. Incredible. They showed a volcano that has been active for over 100 years, a snow leopard hunt, and rock climbing monkeys. All I can say is, see this series.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

1984

It's eerie how prescient Orwell was.

It seems to me that a sinister cabal of rich, powerful men secretly plotting to insulate their aristocratic positions could not have asked for more than the Bush Administration.

First we have the rise to power in 2000 after an ugly, divisive campaign consisting of demonizing minorities, attacking rivals with oh-so-carefully-deniable smear campaigns, the blatant manipulation of the election which nobody quite believed was possible and which they consequently got away with (after a little help from daddy's friends, of course), and then the moment when all was forgotten.

That was the tipping point, of course.

With the support of a stunned nation, we began sending the unwashed masses over seas to kill and die, then redirected to Iraq with a bullshit story about YOURE ALL GOING TO DIE ZOMG so that we can hand no-bid contracts to our friends and ensure the corporate oil structure remains intact for the next 20 years while the best and brightest of the lower class toil in Iraq and the beltway insiders sip mint juleps at their summer homes.

Meanwhile lets gut and destroy the Constitution, the Justice Department, FEMA, and anywhere else we can stick our cronies. Everybody cover everyone else's ass, and if there's anybody who don't wanna play ball SACK EM. Oh and while we're at it remind me to create an education policy that will keep the plebes dumbed down so they don't cotton to what we're doing, p.s. keep shoveling the jesus shit at them they're eating it up like popcorn.

And if that wasn't enough? Let's seed some cancer in our military by opening the torture box. Sure we'll get some bad intel, but they'll be so busy running around chasing false threats they won't have time to stop our complete mortgaging of this country to china while we make sure everybody is dependent on the dole (and totally helpless to stop us while we rape the planet and steal everything we can get our hands on). Besides, have you seen 24's numbers? The truth is most of the "American Sheeple" are already pro-torture. It makes them feel better. And they like to ignore the possibility that anyone is innocent, so they do.

It's astonishing, really. A huge part of my formative years, when I stopped being a student and started being an adult, was this constant state of disbelief, as if the country I loved was disappearing before my eyes and nobody was stopping it.

When you take it all in in one sitting, it makes it hard to refute the conspiracy theorists. My worst fear is that the nutjobs are right. That Cheney will get a man to get a man to get a man to nuke one of our citys. That they will blame Iran and start another war, declare a state of emergency and suspend elections. That cheney will be dictator for life with bush as his puppet, and america's dream will splutter and die, and I will be living in a totalitarian state.

That could never happen, could it?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

30 Rock Continues Not To Suck

Alec Baldwin on tonight's episode: "Therein lies the dilemma. The Corporation has a very strict Bros Before Hos policy."

Monday, December 03, 2007

Immortal Man Entombed!

The Immortal Man is punished by his enemy with entombment at the bottom of a thousand foot grave.

Millennia pass until he is discovered by sonar during an exploratory drill. When dug up, he is sane and lucid. His discoverers are shocked, and have many questions, one of which is how he avoided losing his mind after centuries of hunger, thirst, and captivity.

He replies "After the first few centuries the madness began to be interrupted by brief periods of total lucidity. In one of those rare moments I learned how to control my brain. Rewrite my software, if you like. I went to sleep and had it calculate and memorize pi for a few trillion decimals until you woke me up."



^ The above dialog spawned in my head while watching Heroes and wondering how I would do away with Adam Monroe.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Wow, I Haven't Posted Since February, And That Was About Breakfast For Crying Out Loud!

I vow to post again before Feb '08. There will be at least 4 posts per year. That is all.

Royale this is what I was talking about on the phone.

This is Dynamite Hack's cover of Eazy-E's "Boyz in the Hood".

Saturday, February 10, 2007

I like the weekend.

I just had brunch (eggs, bacon, pancakes, coffee, OJ) at the NoVEL cafe in Westwood. It was delicious, and accompanied by a good book. It's across the street from Fatburger, where I was when I first noticed it last month. And since it's only a mile from the apartment, I believe I may return elsewhen.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Thoughts

I have long pondered the existence and nature of G-d. Tonight I came to two conclusions (for the time being, at least). The first is that organized religion is pageantry and bullshit. Each man must find his own answer to the existential question. The second is that the only evidence of G-d I have ever known is lovingkindness; it is too elegant in concept and execution to be other than divine.