Month: May 2007

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Along with every other American with nothing better to do this weekend I showed up at the theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Not having seen the other two movies in the series it left a mixed impression.

Pirates has a standard plot, good special effects, and some solid acting. All of these made the movie enjoyable.

Everything that Pirates 3 has going for it gets balanced by it’s incredible length. You’d be forgiven for sleeping through bits of the movie and not noticing. Whole scenes could be erased to improve the movies flow and ease up on the boredom.

After discussing the movie briefly with a smattering of other people this view is justified. Even fans of the genre came up with a “but it could’ve been shorter”. This is a length rarely seen outside war documentary-esque films.

So, if you’re easily bored this might be one to wait for on DVD. Unless it’s something you’d really like to see. In which case, it’s probably worth hitting at the theater.

Raymond E. Feist’s Flight of the Nighthawks

Feist is back with more novels set in his Midkemia world. Once again the Conclave of Shadows is fighting a threat to the various and sundry realms they service.

The over-arching plot in these books is fairly straightforward. There’s some evil personages, some gods, and a handful of good characters with foresight and a good view of the “bigger picture” attempting to thwart the evildoers machinations.

So the plot (although involving some well thought twists) doesn’t exactly break new ground in the Fantasy genre.

No, I think what keeps me reading Feist’s novel’s on a somewhat regular basis is that they’re just so damn well written. Each character comes off as being real rather than simply a device awaiting a certain point in the plot. Scenery is richly described. And the books chapters flow with uncanny pace . Not too quick. Not slow and grindingly mechanical.

So, the assassin’s guild is on the move with only Pug’s conclave to stand in there way. Revisit Stardock, Sorceror’s Isle, and Great Kesh in Feist’s latest work Flight of the Nighthawks.

An excellent read.

Scotts Suing Worm Poop Providers

Scotts Miracle-Gro is suing a tiny company selling worm processed biological waste. The basis? Their logo uses a circle. And has colors.

I’d feel a whole lot better if I was making that up.

So TerraCycle, the sue-ee in this instance, has started up a website to let others see what they feel is a grave injustice. And frankly, if Scotts is suing based on a visible packaging similarity between their product and TerraCycle’s worm poop, it probably is.

Find out more at the supporting website.

Finally Saw Borat: Cultural Learnings…

At the insistence of Jolene and Jay (actually ran into him at Taste of India, which is cool) I finally saw Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

While Sacha Baron Cohen’s humor is definitely not for everyone (pretty over the top) it is exceedingly funny.

To recap: Borat is one of Sacha’s characters. He’s a Kazakhstan reporter coming to America to do a cultural exchange report.

Never mind the fact that Sacha’s speaking an odd mix of bullshit and Yiddish (it’s obviously not a Russian dialect, anyway. This was noted on NPR when they interviewed him). Or that he looks suspiciously unlike a Kazakh. No, he passes just fine stateside (except maybe in New York on the morning commute. Those people are equally pissed off at just about everyone.)

Live comedy abounds as he hoodwinks people on his tour into believing in his character. And to be honest he plays Borat to the hilt. At one point during filming he passes out and snaps back up still in character.

There’s quite a bit of outrageous material in here. Such as Borat chasing his traveling companion Azamat (Ken Davitian) naked down the hallway (of a prestigious hotel) waving a sex toy. Even so, I can’t bring myself to call it offensive; most of it is simply derogatory towards Sacha himself rather than demeaning toward others.

Everything considered, Borat is worth seeing. As long as you’re not offended by the content it’s hilarious. He affectively lampoons people by showing them as themselves, making for some classic scenes.

New CentOS 5.0 Xen Server Live

Our new virtual server is live! Pound’s handling the connections and routing to the appropriate destination, Xen does the VM’ing, and Apache’s still working its server mojo.

All this being served up off a beefy (and more efficient) Red Hat Linux machine. Now I just have to get the processor power controls up and we’ll be all set.

Matt Ian Talks about .22 Rifles Not Killing People, Looses Job

Yea. That about sums it up. His three panel comic on how it went down is here.

Now, what bothers me here is the fact that he got fired for talking about it being hard to kill someone with a .22 rifle.

This is a conversation I’ve had before.

And oddly, the content of it wasn’t much different. Basically, the same context with a “yea, a .22 caliber rifle is great for target practice.. you’d have to really try to kill someone with it, not just accidentally misfire or something.”

I’m kinda shocked someone could mis-construe that, with the “have to shoot them in the face” added on, as being some kind of warning that you might be a psychopath. Psychopath’s *don’t* casually talk about the dangers of firearm ownership, they simply start shooting people with them.

This, folks, is why they’re psychopathic. Stating you picked out a target practice rifle based on it’s improbability of harming someone (yes, even with a colorful metaphor) shouldn’t raise any red flags here.

Is it just me, or are people starting to witch hunt because of a infinitesimally small number of deranged individuals?

Jeffree Star @ the Webster Underground

So the sometime internet icon and sometimes offensive Jeffree Star (Queen of Myspace? Maybe?) was playing over at the Webster. And Miss E was running the show, so I figured on dropping by and saying hi (since I usually hang out at the coffee spot in Borders down the street after work.. and she *did* come all the way out from CA :).

Right. That was fun and all. Naturally I forgot the camera -_-. No more accredited press photos for me!

Before going over though (since I remembered the name) I gave the internet a quick troll to remember who I should attach it too. And noticed there’s no Wikipedia entry for Jeffree Star.

Which is odd. There are Wikipedia entries for popular sayings (see You’re the man now, dog entry) yet no Wikipedia entry for a popular internet persona?

Yea. So. Freaky as it may seem his entries been getting more delete action than elephants and is actually banned from being added.

So apparently we can document important memes like.. ah.. you being the man. Now. But not actual people.