escape to insanity

Spurred by Philip’s post inquiring as to whether he has OCD, I clicked through to the OCD Assessment survey.

A few quick radio buttons later, I had my survey completed and clicked the ‘calculate score’ button. Philip said he scored a 41, and had mentioned how he routinely physically checked his car windows to make sure they were secure, stacked his child’s school books in tidy piles, and cleaned his keyboard daily. With only a 41 to show for that (which falls under the category of “you’re probably alright”), I figured I had to be sitting somewhere under that number. Maybe somewhere in the high thirties?

Nope.

I got myself a shiny new score of 60. Yep. 60.

Your Score: 60
51 - 100 It is possible you have OCD and that it is affecting your life. We recommend that you carry out a full assessment (you could try our full version) or seek diagnosis from a mental health professional.

Well. That’s fun. I’ma go arrange something in descending order of width and color. And then wash my hands for an hour.

Ouch.

This was just from filling up my little Forester. I can’t imagine having to fill up the tank on a Suburban or a Hummer or one of those other road tanks. Time to get a bicycle, I think.

Heard this commercial on the radio this morning, for a local “specialty” store:

Come in for our 4/20 sale and get great deals on pipes and water tubes and lots of other smoking accessories… Don’t get ripped off, just get ripped.

Smoking accessories are for legal tobacco use only.

Who do they think they’re kidding? “Get ripped” with legal tobacco? Right.

Nice try, geniuses. “We don’t sell drug paraphernalia here, no sirrrrreee. Legal stuff only. Ignore the smell.”

Sigh.

I’m a big fan of Pandora Radio. I’m also a big fan of last.fm. If you haven’t heard of — or don’t use — either of those, I highly recommend you go check them out immediately. (quick run-down: Pandora is a streaming music service that learns from your input what kind of music you like and plays more music like that. last.fm is a service that lets you track your listening habits over time to see what you listen to the most, etc. Also decent for recommending other music.)

By your powers combined when you mix those two services together, you get Pandora FM. All the awesomeness of Pandora’s music recommendation engine, combined with the tracking service of last.fm.

One of the features of Pandora is that you can request to see why it played a particular song for you. The idea is that even if you don’t like a song that it serves up, you can see what it has in common with music you’ve tagged as being more suitable to your tastes. I had occasion to use that feature today, when Pandora played Nine Inch Nail’s “Every Day Is Exactly the Same” on my station dedicated to electronica (named “Daft Punk Radio” because I seeded it with Daft Punk exclusively). Here’s what it told me (by the way, I should mention I don’t dislike that song. I like it a great deal, just not for this particular station — you should be as specific as possible when training Pandora):

Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features mellow breakbeat rhythms, electronica roots, rock influences, a dynamic male vocal, and angry lyrics.

Angry lyrics. Hmm. Apparently that song has angry lyrics, and apparently Pandora has decided that I like my electronica to have angry music. I’m honestly not sure how it picked that up from the stuff I’ve fed into it. I seeded the station with Daft Punk’s best stuff, some Crystal Method, a dash of Fatboy Slim, etc. Nothing angry. And as far as I recall, nothing that I thumbed-up would qualify as “angry.”

But apparently… angry music it is. I’m waiting for it to decide that Seether is an appropriate electronica group to play.

You may have noticed, but the site is pretty much completely different now. There’s a reason.

I’ve finally given up and switched to a pre-made, commercially available (well, open-source) blogging software package. Wordpress recently released version 2.5, the blogosphere went crazy, and I gave in. For almost three years (almost exactly three years, actually) I got by with my own custom-built, hand-written CMS, but… it just wasn’t enough.

The CMS I’d written myself had gradually evolved over time and had eventually gotten to be relatively respectable, all things considered. I had even been working on a new version, based very extensively off a test installation of Wordpress, that was going to blow the previous version of my own system out of the water. However… the injection of a real-life job and a girlfriend shrunk my spare time considerably, and every time I sat down to work on it I just couldn’t keep up the interest long enough to get anything real done.

So… here we are, Wordpress-ed out and everything. I’ll be playing with this extensively over the next few days or weeks, getting the hang of how everything works together. Eventually I’ll ditch the pre-made theme and write my own theme, but for now… enjoy. There may still be a few kinks to work out. We’ll see how it goes.

One of my e-mail addresses has started receiving more than a healthy helping of spam in recent days. I’m not really sure how, and it’s not important anyway. There are probably a few different ways it could have happened; it doesn’t really matter that much to me.

What does matter is that it’s happening, and that I want it not to be happening. So… in the interest of trying to stem the flow, I’m going to completely disable the account for now. I’m hoping that after a week or two of bounce-back undeliverable mail, somewhere along the line my e-mail address will get removed from whatever lists it made itself onto.

What that means is that anyone who has that e-mail as the primary address for me is going to need to get that updated. As of this coming Sunday 6 April 2008 - one week from today - I’ll be disabling my ‘admin’ e-mail. Most people I know should have some alternate form of contacting me - phone, or another e-mail address.

So… heads up.

See you on the flip side.

Found this article by means of the same way I find all other articles on the vast wasteland that we call the Internet. Through Newsvine. From Newsvine, I got to the Movies group, to an article about movie adaptations that should be stopped, to another article on the same site that seemed to be completely unrelated.

The article itself, and the video that accompanies it, are funny by themselves. But it's the comment thread that made me actually LOL. Yes, I laughed. Out loud. For reals. I give you, A Completely Nondescript Guy Firing A Gun Really Fast.

I recently re-activated my Netflix account after suspending it for several months while I moved around and got re-situated in my current living quarters and settled into my job. The last time I had an active Netflix subscription, I kept running into the problem of not having enough movies picked out to keep my queue continually full. I'd add two or three movies at a time and then not be able to find anything more that I was interested in watching, so I'd be basically paying for time that I wasn't cycling through movies. So I let the account sit dormant for a few months while I slowly added movies to it. When I got up to 70+ movies, I figured that would be sufficient for keeping the movies flowing for a few months, during which time I could add more without running the risk of an empty queue.

That's the background. Today I got home from work and cracked open my mailbox, to discover much to my delight a new movie had arrived. I wasn't really all that surprised — I knew it was coming, thanks to Netflix's thoughtful provision of an RSS feed for my rental activity and a notification e-mail. This particular movie was none other than Silent Running. Here's the plot summary from Netflix:

In a ruined future, huge orbiting spaceships preserve the last remaining trees from pollution and overcrowding on Earth. Botanist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) receives an order to destroy the trees. He refuses, setting himself against his superiors and fellow crew members. Directed by special-effects titan Douglas Trumbull, Silent Running's innovative effects and powerful themes ensured its cult status.

Hmm, alright. Sounds doable for a sci-fi movie, and if you know anything about me you know I love sci-fi movies. Run-time, 90 minutes even. Standard length.

Within the first ten minutes, I'm dubious at best. The characters are extremely cliched and lack any sort of depth. Within the first fifteen minutes, I'm extremely skeptical that there's any redeemable qualities. The plot is beyond thin, and suspension of disbelief can only go so far. The idea is that Earth has somehow lost all of its forests, and the only surviving nature preserves are in the form of a handful of spaceships meandering around the solar system (all built by American Airlines, as indicated by the ever-present logo), each with a half-dozen or so domed enclosures.

The characters are wusses. One guy falls and cuts his hand, and acts as though he's about to die… he goes running to another character to get patched up as easily as a five-year-old who just skinned his knee will go running to mommy. Yet those same characters have no trouble with nuking the world's last forests for no apparent reason (except for our hero, Freeman Lowell — certainly not a symbolic name at all).

By the end of the first half hour, there's just the one character left to concentrate on, and he's the worst kind of stereotypical tree-hugger hippie you will ever meet. Ever. I understand that's sort of the plot, that he's trying to save the trees, but this guy is beyond special. He of course begins to go crazy, being all by himself with the exception of a couple of stumpy robotic drones strongly resembling upside-down mop buckets. It continues for another hour.

He's also apparently the universe's most incompetent botanist. For all his professed love of nature and trees and his beloved forests, all his effort was completely wasted. Of the half-dozen or so domed forest enclosures on his ship, he manages to take action in time to save one. Yep. The others he just sat in his garden and cried about, one after another. Then he gets angry, and you don't want to see him angry. Oh, and he starts to wonder why his trees are dying when he's on the dark side of Saturn… apparently the fact that plants need sunlight to survive slipped his mind.

…I can't go on. This movie was beyond awful. If you ever get the urge to see this movie, or are ever forced for some reason to see it, take a fork and stab yourself in the head. Twice to be safe. Trust me, it's preferable to the alternative of watching this. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is the worst movie ever made (I know I haven't seen enough movies to make that kind of judgment), but it's definitely in the running.

The silent running, that is. (sorry… after 90 minutes of that garbage I can barely think.)

Photo by ellievanhoutte. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Today at work, shortly before noon, I ventured away from my desk on a trek to the refrigerator to retrieve my mid-day sustenance. It was going to be delicious. On my way there, I noticed a box of candy sitting on the counter next to the sink. *gasp* Candy!!! Wooooo!

Oh. It's not free candy, unfortunately. Far from being a gift from some kind soul to those of us in need of a sugary boost, it was instead a fundraiser box. You know, some kid in some club somewhere needs to raise money, so it's decided that they need to peddle some sort of overpriced knick-knacks, or more often food like this. Except it's very rarely the kid doing any of the work — they hand the box to their parents, who trot off to work and deposit the box somewhere where grazers are sure to swoop in on the promise of delectable treats. Anyway… I digress. Here's the box in question.

Note the price: one dollar.

Then I noticed something. There in front of me was another miracle of modern technology and a monument to our gluttony: a vending machine stocked aplenty with miscellaneous treats. Chips, candy bars, even gum. Practically anything you could think of. Except candy unicorns. Those are hard to come by.

Now note the price there: most of that stuff is around 50, maybe 55 cents. Or $0.55 if you wish. Schfifty-five. About half the price of the candy bars in that other box. Okay, okay, I get it. Before anyone yells at me, I understand that it's a fundraiser — you're not supposed to worry about the price, it's going to a good cause. Supposedly.

I don't see any proof that this is in fact going to any “good cause.” Sure, the box says it's for someone's Little League team. But how am I to prove that? There's no Verisign banner, nothing like that. Of course, the person who put it out graciously provided a photo of a kid in a baseball uniform. Slick, but again… no proof. How am I to know that that's even their kid? I'm sure I can find a stock photo of a kid in a baseball uniform somewhere online. See, take a look at… um… my kid. His name is… um… Harry. Isn't he cute? He… um… has leukemia. And he's blind. And his puppy just died. Here, buy some candy!

Cynicism aside, I'm wondering if maybe this person should have put a bit more thought into their endeavour to spoil their kid and deprive them of the opportunity to go peddling their wares door-to-door in some shady neighborhood. When they chose a location for their highway robbery, they were no doubt looking for a high-traffic spot where people were sure to see the sugar and get suckered in. But… they put it right next to the vending machine.

I didn't get out a tape measure, but I'm pretty sure that's not much more than three, maybe four feet. That's it. Maybe not the brightest move? I dunno… if I'm really hungry for some candy, I'm not gonna grab my wallet. I'm going to rummage around in my pocket for whatever change I can scrounge up and plunk it into the vending machine for something cheap yet tasty. These parents might have been better off putting their fundraiser somewhere like… on a table in their department, where the hungry sugar-cravers will have to contend with the law of supply and demand. They have a demand, and the supply here is so much easier to get to.

We're starting to get into the new year… about to the point where writing checks with the wrong year is starting to fade away. We've probably gotten to the point where we're admitting that our resolutions — if we made any — are probably not going to be taken seriously. (I was going to make a resolution not to make any resolutions, but then… well… the universe would have imploded. You can thank me later.)

I'm starting to realize just how badly my wallet is going to be drained this year. It's a good thing I have no comprehension of anything relating to budgets, because mine would be blown entirely on “entertainment.” 2008 is looking like it'll be a great year for movies. In no particular order, except by the month they're going to be released, I present to you the awesomeness of 2008 in movies.

January

• Cloverfield (aka 1-18-08) I've been waiting for this movie to come out (like the rest of the movie-going world) since the trailer first appeared before Transformers. Hopefully the whole movie isn't shot in that shaky hand-held camera style - I don't think I could last through two hours of that.

February

• Jumper. This is another movie I've been psyched about since seeing the preview for it. Hayden might be able to pull himself out of the Anakin role for this one. Samuel L. Jackson promises an interesting performance too…

• Vantage Point. Eight different views of the same assassination attempt. The extended trailer I saw (on the Resident Evil: Extinction DVD) made it out to be much more political than I was aware.

April

• The Forbidden Kingdom. Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and this plot outline from IMDb.

  A discovery made by a kung fu obsessed American teen sends him on an adventure to China, where he joins up with a band of martial arts warriors in order to free the imprisoned Monkey King.

  That's all the more I need for this to intrigue me.

May

• Iron Man. 'Nuff said.

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While I think ol' Harrison Ford is getting a bit on in years to have quite the same effect as the first three, this installation of Indy could be interesting.

June

• The Incredible Hulk. While I think Eric Bana was perfect for the Bruce Banner character, I'm a big fan of Ed Norton (”People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.”) so I'm hoping he can do the role some justice. I can't think of a single Ed Norton movie I haven't liked, so I've got high hopes for this one.

• Wanted. The plot synopsis, courtesy of Wikipedia:

  Wesley Gibson is offered the opportunity to seek revenge in the murder of his father, who was an assassin. Gibson is invited by his father's partner, Sloan, to follow in his father's footsteps. Sloan's second-in-command mentors Gibson. Wesley Gibson follows the death orders issued by the Fates, weavers who read individuals' destinies in fabrics produced by mystical looms.

  Umm… sure. Suspension of disbelief, here I come!

July

• The Dark Knight !!!! That's all I can say about this one.

August

• Blindness. Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in a movie where even the Oracle, Wikipedia, doesn't have much to say about it. I'm intrigued - the story is apparently something about a city where the sudden loss of sight for the entire population brings on the collapse of their culture. Interesting, no?

• The International. Clive Owen is an Interpol agent investigating a corporation for corruption and murder. Alrighty, you've got my interest. I'll bite.

November

• Bond 22. Again, enough said. Though, “Bond 22″ is only the working title for now. Apparently this picks up exactly two minutes after the end of Casino Royale, which was an amazing movie, and continues the character development of early Bond.

December

• The Day the Earth Stood Still. Even though this remake is going to be starring Keanu Reeves (whoa!) I have decent hopes for this one. Jennifer Connelly might be able to rescue the film from Keanu's dubious acting.

And those are just the ones I'm aware of. There's bound to be a few others being released that I just haven't heard of but are still nothing short of awesome. I'm expecting to be throwing down quite a bit of cash money this year - the MPAA better not complain about theatre revenue this year. I'll be keeping them afloat singlehandedly, methinks.

Did I miss any good ones coming out?