Category: Personal

Well hoo-fucking-finally-ray:

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products.

Last year I finished second, by one measly point, in our knockout stages only SportsFilter competition. This year we’re starting from the beginning, or at least the earliest the UEFA site allows, and I’ve set up a league called SportsFilter. Even if you aren’t a SpoFite, feel free to show your skills by joining our little competition.

In many classic tales, going back to the Book of Job, a man is put under intense pressure. Events simply pile bad results, hurt and injury atop each other so much that a break is unavoidable. In Job, of course, the man follows God’s word and is saved. In American revenge movies that are so popular these days, the man fights back and destroys those responsible.

In movies the hero rarely pays a cost beyond that which draws him into the fight. In Collateral Damage, Arnold’s character loses his wife and child but after that he pays no cost beyond a few bruises and utterly destroys the drug lord who took them. Real life rarely seems so clean; most fights do not leave the true fighter unscathed.

One wonders, pondering events, if one’s nature can reach the other end of a descent into depths, to match one’s opponent tit for tat, will leave one unsullied and still capable of better things.

Cornholio [via The Graham Norton Effect]

A shocker in anyone’s book: Israel holds France to a 0-0 draw in today’s qualifier.

For details on the match, check reports from FoxSportsWorld or SoccerNet, or the US Men’s site. My commentary is an email I sent to FoxSportsWorld’s MLS Wrap, since they broadcast the match and John Harkes is the host of that show:

Guys,

I was really disappointed with John Harkes commentary on the match. Great that we won, and points for calling out the pitiful referee (this guy has to get a lesson from CONCACAF!), but the homerism was unnecessary and not even useful. The US players started out great, until a minute or two after the first goal, then sat back with sloppy and lazy play most of the rest of the way.

Such an effort will do against El Salvador, Panama and Jamaica but will really hurt us in the final qualifying round and fir sure in Germany. You think teams like Czech Republic, Korea, Turkey, Argentina will be so kind as to get silly send-offs and expend zero energy on offense against us?

From just after the red card until Donovan’s goal, the team had almost 100% possession but barely a single decent shot on frame. How is that good play? Better to be honest, fans can see for themselves what’s happening. Be critical, these are professionals, and such honesty would be a breath of fresh air in American soccer television, that’s for sure.

The late comments on how Clint Mathis and his Row Z first touch shots were “opening up opportunities” for us are, at the least, confusing to me. Once or twice, perhaps, would make some space in the back but if a player keeps doing it then there never is such an opportunity. If anything, he wasted most of our late chances for a third goal which, as you pointed out, might be very relevant in the final accounting.

John, if you want to be a homer and use your words to support the team, make sure Bruce gets this kind of message. Be honest with him, I’m sure you get the opportunities.

Not like anyone needs one but here’s another good reason not to have a cat.

Some combination of mood and music lead me to wolf down a, the fourth book in Kage Baker’s series about that mysterious future Company, between last night and today. No good soccer matches to watch I suppose. Ha! Though tomorrow our Men take on El Salvador in Foxboro in a World Cup qualifier which’ll be shown live on FoxSportsWorld…

[Baker has a Company short story, Standing in His Light, available on the SciFi website if you’d like a little taste of her writing.]

The Graveyard Game focuses again on Joseph, working with another cyborg, Lewis, a literary recovery specialist who also holds the now missing Botanist Mendoza in a special place in his heart. (The third Company book, Mendoza In Hollywood, is next on my list to read but the gist of her plight is discussed thoroughly in this story.) Joseph and Lewis travel all over the globe and through several hundred years of real time to pursue her, careful all the while to hide their interest and activity from their bosses. Quite dangerous.

Baker also inserts several mysterious little interludes of Joseph talking to Budu, the enormous and even more ancient Enforcer, explaining the basics of what’s going on in ways she couldn’t contrive to fit in the normal flow. That’s another part of the plot, Joseph’s attempt to find Budu and the other Enforcers who he hadn’t scene in a millenia.

There’s also the building tension, not resolved here, of what will happen in the climactic year of 2355. Several factions are now clear and which of them, if any, will prevail then is clearly driving the series’ overal arc. Baker is a really good writer, though her non-Company oevre seems to be mostly fantasy, stuff I don’t care for, but I need to keep my eye out for the remaining volumes.

(I also decided I had to have the first book, In the Garden of Iden, and so popped $5.60–shipping included–to get it from a seller on eBay.)

recommended

Kage Baker has created an interesting series of novels and stories about a 24th century company called Dr. Zeus Incorporated. These future humans have figured out two key technological innovations–immortality and time travel–and set out to capitalize on them. Unfortunately, neither is simple or all that desirable, so the (mostly unseen, in what I’ve read) executives create a group of slaves to reach their ends instead.

[For the interested, becoming immortal is a lengthy, painful process, so much so that only infants can truly tolerate it, while time travel is also painful and generally not worth the expense and trouble. The company set up a base in deep prehistory, some 30,000 years ago, and created immortals then who could operate in the shadows of recorded history to take the materials desired in the 24th century.]

Sky Coyote is the series’ second book though the main character, one of those original prehistoric immortals named Joseph, was also the protagonist of In the Garden of Iden (which I do want to read). Anyway, this story is set in 1699 into 1700 whence Joseph has been assigned to take the guise of a deity called Sky Coyote and convince an entire village of native Americans, the Chumash of Humaship, to cross the rainbow bridge of their myths to escape the coming predations of the White Man.

Since the workers of Dr. Zeus have 24th centhnology, there’s no trouble transforming Joseph into a convincing Coyote, tail, paws and all, and he’s able to use his millenia of human understanding to get everyone’s agreement. There really isn’t much doubt of success, the only challenge being a missionary from another native religion who pops up late and is quickly dispatched; the charm here is Baker’s creation of Joseph and the Chumash with their now-disappeared way of life and the wistful knowledge that, agree or not, they’ll be gone.

I also recently read Black Projects, White Knights, a collection of short stories set in the same milleau. This is actually the fifth book in the series by publication order and probably a mistake to have read it first 😉 as I’d have understood it much better after reading the earlier stuff. The stories are generally short and varied, half set in the past, mainly California, and half telling the story of a special 24th century English boy named Alec Checkerfield.

A pair of enjoyable reads!

Why do scientists hate Atkins? Once again researchers, with ties to Weight Watchers this time, denigrate the best eating plan I’ve found (second anniversary was yesterday, have lost 60 pounds with no sign of gaining back) with no evidence.

What do Joss Whedon and Penelope Spheeris have in common? Roseanne!

Added a link (over there on the right side bar) to Defender Bear, “a cartoon developed by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund to assist its project to defeat George W. Bush and to elect John Kerry as president of the United States. DefenderBear.org is the Website created to feature the cartoons and related subjects. Defenders Action Fund is working to oppose George Bush’s re-election because it considers him the most anti-conservation U.S. president in history, and because it sees John Kerry as likely to be one of the most pro-conservation presidents in history.”

I don’t remember the near destruction of Venice in 1899, do you?

Reality shows suck, there is not a single one I think is worth being on television, and I don’t understand how they’ve become so successful the last few years. And it’s only getting worse with new crap ideas–and plenty of ripoffs and imitations–coming in the next weeks. Do yourself a big favor and skip them all.

A laugher for you: First Lady Promoting Husband As Warrior, thanks Laura I needed that. Because I read about how fucked we are courtesy of Republican whores voting machine vendor Diebold.

“President Bush will make certain that we are combating terrorism at the source, beyond our shores, so we can reduce the risk of having to confront it in the streets of New York. John Kerry’s record of inconsistent positions on combating terrorism gives us no confidence he’ll pursue such a determined course.” — Rudy Guiliani at the 2004 RNC

So, Rudy, you’re saying that George Bush, a man with zero foreign policy or defense experience before becoming (I won’t say ‘elected’) President should have been given the benefit of the doubt when he was a candidate but John Kerry, a man who has actually served his country in a war, should not. Set aside the eighteen years of dealing with national issues in the Senate, because those don’t count either.

Rudy, I know you’re a Republican and one who has a lot of political capital, but don’t go down that Swift Boad river!

Later: Garret went off on Guiliani (and McCain) in far greater detail.

There are three different regional Bob’s Big Boy special sauces, imagine that! What amazing things one can learn watching FoodTV.

In this presidential eleciton year, the reality of our system has truly become clear to me. I despise the current Administration, their policies and practices but for all that I want John Kerry to win I wonder how much difference he can make.

Head of State is Chris Rock’s satirical take on the subject and it’s funnier than I’d expected; in fact if there was anything else on that remotely interested me I’d have switched the channel. That would have been a mistake. Rock is a funny, funy man and I should have trusted him to not screw us with his first outing as director.

In a nutshell: Rock plays Mays Gilliam, an alderman in Washington, D.C., who’s essentially hit bottom. Elsewhere the Democratic candidate for president dies in a plane crash and no ‘eligible’ politician wants to stand against the Republicans’ man, Vice President Brian Lewis, a war hero and “Sharon Stone’s cousin.” That night Gilliam is in the news standing up for some nobody in a local dispute and comes to the attention of the right people who pick him as a sure loser who’ll do some good for the party nonetheless.

Of course you can’t keep someone like that in straightjacket and Gilliam, frustrated at parroting the same meaningless lines over and over, goes off script. Cinderella movies have to go up from bottom and that’s where Rock’s script takes off. Once he goes natural and populist everyone loves him, his poll numbers start to go somewhere and the other candidate starts getting nervous.

The high point, for me, is the debate between them. Lewis gives us standard political speechifying; he calls Gilliam an amateur and closes with his standard campaign tagline, “God bless America and no one else.” This is truly where Rock makes the clearest political commentary of the movie, lashing out at the professional’s hypocrisy and insulation from reality. Sure none of it is particularly original but the words hit home, resonate and made me laugh.

State isn’t perfect, Rock makes too much of his blackness and wastes a romantic subplot with a sweet hardworking girl (contrasted with Robin Givens’ running joke of an ex- who wants her suddenly good thing back).

recommended if you’re in the mood

Life for this crew is all about the junk, the stuff you shoot into your veins, snort when necessary. Tell yourself you’re not addicted, that you can stop on a dime whenever that day comes. No problemo. Anyone who isn’t an addict can see immediately that self-deception of these people.

Anyway, Spun is essentially an attempt at an American version of Trainspotting but director Jonas Ackerlund doesn’t come close to the humanizing success Danny Boyle had with that film. Depending on Mickey Rourke for a major role is a good predictor, I’d say, and trampling too many storylines on top of each other is another. Ackerlund’s done some terrific work with music videos but not here.

don’t bother