Category: Personal

Bill is (pretty much) always glad to help.

I really hate NBC these days, with their ridiculous programming strategy of starting shows at one minute before the hour–screwing up any chance of recording a program in the hour, or at least the half hour, immediately before–or 20 after, but really 20 after means 24. Stupid fucking NBC.

Foveon enters the mass market with a $399 Polaroid-branded digital camera.

The saga does not end. I admit, I was a bad boy and sent this response:

“Ooh, I’m so scared! All those capital letters and harsh words.” Really, I just don’t seem willing to allow my correspondent the final word, which they so seem to desire. OTOH, I see the opportunity to turn annoyance into amusement. Plus, last night the other owners, at least those who bothered to show up or give a proxy, re-elected me to another year in my very prestigious office.

This morning awaiting me in the inbox was an email with the subject “3 rd FINAL WARNING.” So apparently the second warning was not the final one for me. I’m thinking this person misunderstands the word final, aren’t you? And what did this email say?

“JUST STOP IT.

You have demonstrated who you are in your actions and emails.

NO MORE, ENOUGH.”

Seriously, though, I’m not about to give in that easily. No way. So I quickly composed an answer of my own to keep the ball rolling:

“I’m so sorry you feel this way. Really, I am. Because your feelings are so much more important than mine or anyone else’s.”

Wonder what tomorrow will bring. Will these warnings be transformed into action? Will I rue my inability to control my funny bone? Stay tuned to this same Bat channel to find out.

I’ve had the pleasure lately of exchanging emails with one of the members of the homeowners association (remember, I’m the Prez). The underlying issue is annoying enough but now this person is telling me that I better not send any more unprofessional emails: “DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE OF YOUR UNPROFESSIONAL EMAILS. STOP IT, JUST STOP IT. I’ve had more than ENOUGH.”

In fact, this was my “2nd and FINAL warning” and, oh my goodness, I am so scared! I’m quaking in my boots as to the consequences if I ever send this person another UNPROFESSIONAL EMAIL. Although I do sort of wonder just what my correspondent means by unprofessional since my position is, of course, unpaid volunteer work. As far as I can glean from previous messages, I am expected to read, respect and respond to any inanity that this person sends me but my responses must not include any opinion or emotion.

In a previous email this person stated that respect must be earned. Fair enough. But then I would never be able to respond to any communications from this person seriously as this person’s behavior is so far off the wall as to induce continual laughter, to the point of tears, except when I’m thinking an ulcer is coming soon–you’ve read the email excerpt above, I’m sure you understand.

This person is, bottom line, impossible to satisfy. I’d say there are mental health issues involved except that I don’t have the education or certification to really make such a judgment. However, as an amateur I feel free to speculate. I keep wondering if this person will go far enough over the line so that I could file a lawsuit for harassment; certainly my correspondent has often used the services of lawyers in attempting to get a desired resolution but I actually prefer to go that route only if I’ve a decent chance of prevailing. Still, flights of fantasy are entertaining.

Anyway, we have a board meeting tonight, where I’m up for re-election, and I keep wondering if this person will (finally) stand up to try and take the job away from me. I doubt this member will and I know that the antics are widely known, more than enough to assure this person no chance of winning. But it would be a great laugher.

Are dark matter amd dark energy the phlogiston and ether of our age? Apparently, a research team sudying WMAP data thinks they just may be.

Dontcha just love stretching the gluten proteins?

I just found out that the last company I worked for back in New Jersey, which was called Dragoco at the time, has merged and is now part of Symrise.

Radical Warship Takes Shape gives an overview of a new destroyer/cruiser design the Navy is developing. Simply dripping with tech but there are some important issues which have yet to be answered.

Woody Allen spent a lot of time in the 1980s and ’90s trying to make interesting movies without repeating himself. Or at least not repeating himself too badly. When you throw in his love of Gershwin and Porter, there’s no need to be surprised that he made a modern ’30s musical, 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You. Since I’m a known Allen fan, no need to be surprised that I enjoyed this one.

As is often the case, Allen uses an extended family to simplify his need to connect the cast. Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn are the parents, Allen is Hawn’s ex, Natasha Lyonne is the daughter of Allen and Hawn, and Drew Barrymore, Natalie Portman, Lukas Haas, and Gaby Hoffmann play the only other siblings. Barrymore, as the film opens, becomes engaged to Edward Norton but later gets entangled with ex-con Tim Roth; Lyonne travels a bit and has several flings.

Lyonne also has a burning itch to find the perfect woman to match with her father. When they’re vacationing in Venice and bump into Julia Roberts, who’s there with her husband, daughter realizes she knows the stunning beauty, recognizing her as a longtime patient of her friend’s psychiatrist mother (played, uncredited for some reason by Allen regular Dianne Wiest); Roberts, unaware that the girls peep on the mother’s sessions, reveals all her dreams and fantasies and Lyonne instructs Allen for wooing purposes.

Fortunately, I was pretty much able to tune out the musical numbers. I suppose they were fine but, as good as the cast is at acting, they aren’t a song and dance troup of the level of Astaire and Rogers or Sinatra, Kelly and and Ann Miller. Plus this film was made in 1996 and not 50 years earlier and it just didn’t ring true to me. Amusingly Barrymore didn’t do her own vocals but the person who sang for her wasn’t credited onscreen.

recommended for Allen fans

Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are (separately) stuck in Tokyo for a week, left, for the most part, to their own devices and unable to find activities of interest or to sleep in the unfamiliar environment. He’s a movie star in town to shoot some whiskey commercials for megabucks; she’s the wife of a rock and roll photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) who’s busy with his shoot. They’re staying in the same hotel and after bumping into each other a couple of times, strike up a friendship.

Sofia Coppola wrote and directed Lost in Translation, partly based on similar experiences she had earlier. Over on Rotten Tomatoes I see mainly very positive reviews linked, and of course it has gotten a few Oscar nominations, but I really felt left down by the movie. Yes, the two leads give great performances and Ribisi and Anna Farris (playing a dumb blonde movie star also staying in the hotel) are convincing too but Lost has two major flaws that in the end put it in the good, not great, class:

1. There are odd production errors, most notably a very visible boom mike, that break the fourth wall for no given reason. If Coppola wanted to say something meta about filmmaking itself she didn’t get it across to us; oddly, none of the reviews I checked mention these flaws but can’t hurl enough superlatives around.
2. After initially establishing the loneliness and restlessness of the two main characters, the script keeps separating them even though the scenes apart add little or no value to establishing character and seriously detract from the main focus on the relationship. I’m particular thinking of her second shrine visit and his golf outing.

I suppose I’m not overly surprised that LiT landed four Oscar nominations–for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Script and Murray for Best Actor–but I truly think this is one of those times where people swallowed the hype. I credit it to the track record of Coppola (who many felt was unjustly overlooked, even snubbed, for her first major outing, The Virgin Suicides), a radical visual portrayal of Tokyo itself, Murray giving a much more subdued, controlled performance than he’s really ever done before (okay, he might deserve the nomination) and Johannson’s radiance and very hard to ignore opening shot of her fine ass in pink panties.

recommended

I read this article (The rejected gospels) in the paper this morning and immediately wondered what Rob would say about it.

Start a software company that promises to enable utility computing and either Sun or HP will buy it before you even ship.

Yesterday’s bit of doggerel, just to give a spot of explanation, was an exercise in combining found bits of dialog, remembered lyrics and out of context sentence fragments from news articles. Hopefully at least one of you found it to have some emotional resonance.

Though the rumor mill has been back and forth on whether or not director McG (Charlie’s Angels) is actually going ahead with a new Superman film, Superhero Hype! is now reporting that the film is on and that Beyonce Knowles is likely to be cast as Lois Lane, with the possibility of Johnny Depp as uber-villain Lex Luthor. Knowles herself confirmed that she’s going after the role in a recent TV interview but I think Depp’s name is just being used to help the project along–he seems to be “up” for a role in nearly every big name movie that’s potentially being made over the next few years thanks to his recent successes.

The Science Fiction Writers Association’s 2003 Preliminary Nebula ballot is now up [via /.] What does this mean for you? It means that most of the non-novel fiction nominees are now posted to the web for your reading, and linked from this one page for your convenience. Enjoy!

BBC America is now showing a classic (1995-96) Rowan Atkinson series called The Thin Blue Line, about an extremely incompetent police squad. It was written by Ben Elton, who also did Atkinson’s various Black Adders and Mr. Bean. Just thought you’d like to know.

Come back to me!

I’m proud of my big fat ass

It was a great pleasure to be naked in [the] film

You knew the broadcast would be watched by millions

of families with children–now you owe me billions.

Valentine’s Day is coming up, and each of us is thinking

of romance–and you could give me a jolly good rogering–

No more trolling the Internet for juicy tales please,

We’re talking about young kids, who don’t even really know

The pressure yet.

I listen to voices, snap my fingers and I love the way music

Makes me feel–I do, I truly do–the message is, get up and dance!

Just do it! My head is just something I keep my hat on.

Don’t ask for my family’s darkest secret, how my older

Brother threatened to kill him, beat him to a pulp, stomp!

That fool tried to get between him and his ex-wife. No

Denying, as it was all caught on camera and then

He disappeared down Flamingo Lane.

Yobbos and hooligans, pardon me for living, but there was a time

A time when buying soap was enough, and now there’s a hold up.

I thought he was a student, he was taking heroin and grabbing

Condoms–he should not have been out in the street–and there

He was, shouting, “I’m proud of my big fat ass” to all and anon.

Another TiVo Suggestion, seemed cute and for some reason more appealing than other available shows. Plus Evan Rachel Wood has gotten much good press for thirteen and I thought I see what this one held. 2001’s Little Secrets is, I have to say, a great movie for young girls: it’s smart, not smarmy, fun and has a couple of cute boys; Wood and her friends learn a valuable lesson in the end, of course, and in a fair way. But unless you’re a parent watching with your under-14 daughter, it really isn’t that much fun to sit through.

no rating

Yes! I’m in emphatic agreement with Melanie and have been since ’72.