Son of Rambow: Ultimately, meh.
The Calamari Wrestler: This is insane, even for the Japanese. Best part: the disguise.
Doom: As simple as the plot of the video game was, it was still better than this.
The Wallflower: Vol. 3: Lesson 3: 10 Things I Hate About Yuki: not as funny as the last 2.
Xenosaga: Vol. 3: Free Will Not sure as I get it.
Hawk: The Slayer: Epic cheese.
Speed Racer: Engaging goofiness.
Sukiyaki Western Django Visually great, but no. The accents were hard to take, too. I liked the guy in the nekomimi hat.
Robin Hood: Season 1: Disc 1 And there was much yarn-mail. Not nearly as good as the other BBC series, which linked Robin with the mythical Green Man.
Naruto the Movie 2: Legend of the Stone of Gelel: Middling effort, even for Naruto. Still, contains a ferret.
The Forbidden Kingdom: what a terrible movie. It was bad enough when the incomprehensible story bits were Chinese folk tales. American 70's fight movies movies by way of China, doubly so.
Mushi-Shi: Vol. 5: Good stuff
Tokyo Majin: Vol. 3: The Bodhisattva Eye: A lot of filler.
The Wallflower: Vol. 2: Shrewing of the Timid: Simple, but it made me laugh.
Moonphase: Vol. 6 I never got this mix of horror and nekomimi mode, but wanted to see how it would end.
Mezzo: Vol. 2: Shell Two, Mezzo: Vol. 3: Shell Three: Less complicated than the first one, but still, nice.
The Wallflower: Vol. 1: My Fair Bishonen: Uneven, but worth another disc.
Dai-Guard: Vol. 6: Bottom Line: never really gets anywhere.
Stellvia: Vol. 1: Foundation I: Interesting story and technology, but frequently wanted to punch that girl. I'm not sure if it is worth another 7 discs for something they were planning a sequel for, thus probably has no actual resolution.
Wandaba Style: Vol. 1: Rocket to Stardom!: bleh. Nothing particularly wrong, it just doesn't click.
Odd. The WOW trial client eventually let me do everything, like trade, without ever downloading everything. In fact, when I went to a new zone, it downloaded that. I'm not sure what it is doing, or why it needs both a separate trial and retail directory. Or why both of them are filled with .exe's.
Tokyo Majin: Vol. 2: Dark Arts: Predestined Power I still think the first 3 minutes of this were the greatest ever, but these seem better than the previous episodes.
Mezzo: Vol. 1: Shell One: Confusing at first, but excellent story telling. Plus, not quite Solty's level, but getting there.
In an effort to kill time over the vacation, I downloaded the WOW trial, but have already purchased it before the trial expired. If you are in Nordrassil, say hi to Binchou, and I'll give you some leather goods. The downloader could use some work. It is doing horrible things to my drive, and is choking the download channel by maxing out the upload on the ADSL, and required so many open ports I used the DMZ host option, which defeats the purpose of a firewall. Then it quit, and had to recheck the entire thing again. Would have been easier to have provided a torrent. I should have just bought the retail version, but the purchase page made it seem like it was just flipping a switch.
Dai-Guard: Vol. 4: Red Tape and Proud Hearts: recap episode. took the next one out of the queue.
Dai-Guard: Vol. 3: Checks and Balances of Terror: wanders off into filler.
Scrubs: Season 6: Disc 1: ever increasing amounts of message.
Karin: Vol. 4: Human or Vampire: filler.
Silk: I liked it. I also much preferred the theatrical ending over the director's cut, for a change.
Heroes seems to be getting better.
Vexille: Nice art, though the plot peters out near the end.
I just noticed the new Safari developers menu. Not as nice as a tricked out Fox, but much nicer, and certainly much slicker, than a stock Fox.
The Machine Girl: lol. The disc summary is wrong.
Red Wolf / Awakening Punch: Double Feature: The subtitles are completely illegible. The real treat is the details: the fancy dinner serving cans of Pepsi, the drummer with the sideways mohawk who appeared on both sides of the stage, the fact that even the English needs to be translated, the fact that the translations are worse. / An old school dub, until the music from the Godfather started.
The Station Agent: As much as moving to shack in central New Jersey has an appeal, about as interesting as watching a train go by.
Ugetsu: If only they had the blessing of Binchou-tan.
Stray Dog: IMHO, there were a few technical details wrong in the commentary.
The Lathe of Heaven: That man has the oddest forehead. It is non-Euclidean. It looks different depending on the angle, like an intrusion of higher dimensional space into 3D. Which would be appropriate for the theme. Another SF movie brought to by the people who brought you "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank", except without the suck.
Otaku No Video: For the sake of historical completeness, now that Giant X has failed.
High Risk: Also terrible subtitles, and I think I saw it, with better subtitles.
Flying Dagger: Kung fu sex comedy. The subtitles are terrible, but it has its moments.
I thought my watch had died while attempting to reset it. I put it in a drawer, but didn't give up. Once I tried again, it worked. And now isn't 17 minutes fast, either. The water tight seal crumbled and fell out, though. It only has 10 more years to go. The year field only goes up to 2018.
Speaking of phlogiston, I got a space foam mattress topper from SmartBargains.com. My bed/chair was not holding pressure any more. It does smell. ("you may notice a newness scent.") The King was the same price as the Twin, so I could get one extra long, and double it up. It is almost as thick as a real space foam mattress, for 1/10th the price. Speaking of miserly living: while throwing yet more money into the market, I couldn't help but see the latest numbers: a 5% annual return for 17.5K, ETB is 2013. That requires I gain at least 30,000 out of the Swamp to Binchoustan move, which The Moth says is increasingly less likely, but includes saving up to buy the 'stan before selling the Swamp and could even do 20K. Either way, not any time soon. I really should take advantage of recession prices on consumer electronics, though I know I won't.
Legend of Speed: Subtitles are terrible. Initial D was better, anyway.
Eastern Condors: Despite the comical aspect, I'm reasonably certain being stabbed in the ass is not an immediately fatal wound. The beginning was not so great, but the fight at the end was cool.
Doomsday: Oddly high profile secondary cast for such a cheesy movie. Still, I enjoy my apocalypses. Nice use of phlogiston.
Zebraman: The Japanese Pumaman, though second half drags a lot. Black and white Ecstasy
The Bicycle Thief: Generally helps, when invoking sympathy, that your protagonist not be an ass.
Dreadnaught: another weird movie with great fights.
I don't have to go to jury duty. They announced at the start that they would only get through at most the first 40 people, and I was #94, so that took all the suspense out of it. Once I learned it would get me out of the monday meeting for 6 months, I warmed up to it considerably. So now I'm disappointed either way.
Cardcaptor Sakura: Vol. 13: Star Cards: The Moth has returned and I didn't get the entire CCS there, so I'll finish it here. Hoe~~~
Noir: Vol. 7: The End of Matter: lesbian bath action, forks, and nun massacre. As a side note to trilogy's disappointing endings: matter does not in fact end.
Fall anime, first episode reviews
Winner: Casshern, at least of the first episode. I like the rust.
Noir: Vol. 2: The Hit List: still excessively slow
Ratcatcher: I still think poverty is related directly to stupidity.
Ok, now, with a -38% return, Project Binchoustan is behind. (actually not, if I sell the condo to buy the -stan. Tricky, but not unreasonable.) However, I have adjusted to sleeping on my back more, which is required by the inflatable chair buffering the too hard mattress, so I'm good until 2012. Or until it pops. Now I have to sew up the Binchou-tan style hole in my sheet.
Tideland: Dialog was incomprehensible.
Immortal: Excessively French, but interesting. Odd mix of CGI and 3D. Possibly the French thing, but failed to capture New York. In the last B5 movie, there was a shot that I knew was of a future NYC. In the making of bit, sure enough, they started with a shot of Central Park and added futuristic buildings.
Noir: Vol. 1: Shades of Darkness: The art is old school, I already know the general outline of the plot. Not really worth it just for Kaijura-sensei's music, which is not as good as in, say, Madlax.
The Condemned: Stone Cold is no The Rock.
Vacation book: Anathem: excellent. To quote the twice late Steve Jobs (note to stock market abusing my Apple shares: not actually dead), despite the made up words, it reads like butter. Even though I had to construct a stand for it so I could read it without the book crushing either itself or me, I wanted more. Contains the immortal line: "A race, if that is the right word, of tall people with bony noses and prematurely white hair, hawking fresh shellfish packed in poly crates full of seaweed." Housing Idea: the Concent of Saunt Binchou.
I knew I should have bought a mattress instead of investing over the summer. Now every time I think about how hard the mattress is, I'll have regret instead of being motivated to buy a new mattress. Plus, I stuck a board under it to stop the box springs from creaking, and while that worked, it is even harder. And every time I invest more, the market plunges days later. (You should not invest until after early November, my last scheduled investment of the year. I'm assuming it will break the 10 mark for both the Dow and S&P only after I invest more.) The 10 year average is now back down to near 8%, the historical average, which is reassuring that history proceeds apace, despite Bush's best efforts to end it. 8% is far above the minimum for my retirement plan to work, again reassuring as nearly 2 years of saving evaporate. Although I know I shouldn't have, I plugged the current numbers into the Project Binchoustan spreadsheet. Depending on the housing values, it is about back to where it was originally: 2012, perhaps later if I want to spend a lot more on consumer goods, like a new mattress. When one is attempting to predict something nearly 30 years away, it is reassuring that despite a 25% drop, a prediction 9 months old is still OK (though now straining the top of those ranges), and one from 2 years ago is still good.
The Man Who Sued God: bleargh.
Kujibiki Unbalance: Vol. 3: Overall, adequate.
Mushi-Shi: Vol. 4: I remember these. I think they are better.
Hare + Guu 2 Vol. 2: Very funny, and the shorter episodes work better, but Netflix has this as Volume 1, and isn't shipping volume 2. Possibly as a result of confusing "Deluxe" with "2" (see the title), and reading the 2 on the disc the wrong way. Note to future: try getting vol 1 again next year.
Hare + Guu: Vol. 7: middling funny.
The dining room table is horizontal again, though in what I'm referring to as the Japanese style: 20 cm off the ground and propped up on books. Hopefully it is enough to keep the spiders out of drafts.
Danger Man: Competent, yet boring, or at least dated. Speaking of which:
Fringe: Competent, yet boring. Also unlikable.
Hare + Guu: Vol. 6: funny. The plane one especially.
Hare + Guu: Vol. 4: not as funny as 3
Sigh. I knew I should have added more money to the market during the latest set of failures, but didn't and the market went back up, so I added money ahead of schedule, to get it in before the bailout. Even though it is a terrible idea and will be vastly mismanaged, I assumed that this means it would be done. Of course the morning after, the bailout falls apart (Republicans!) and Wamu is seized. Idea for stealing: Somebody said on the radio that without the bailout capital, all small business would cease. Even if this were true, (and look at the withdrawal, not loss, in money market funds to see that capital is somewhere (Plus the root of the problem is the movement of capital out of the tech stocks and into housing, so frankly, those people could use less money, anyway)) all we'd need is one of the small loan websites that do good work in the third-world. Now that we live there.
The new VLC is nice, uses horizontal scrolling to scrub, does do better subtitle handling (including during f-forward), though it still looks old-school. That it still plays audio during f-forward is good (frequently giggle inducing) and bad as high speed is super high pitched. Would be extremely useful if they pitched it back down.
Hare + Guu: Vol. 5: Not as funny as 3. 4 is in transit.
Mushi-Shi: Vol. 3: these are more the sort of things I remember, though I still don't remember these.
Card Captor Sakura #1: Excessive cuteness! Hail the Queen of the Magical Girls! Nanoha can eat it!! Ferret-Yuuno-kun was the cute one, anyway!!! The people who did the American version should be dragged out and shot. The people who did the DVD transfers for the movies should be beaten over the head, because this is older and yet far cleaner. Hoe~~
Kujibiki Unbalance: Vol. 2: The girl reminds me of Osaka, but the OVA is still the best thing on the disc.
Hare + Guu 3: There's the funny again.
Kujibiki Unbalance: Vol. 1: yes, the fictional series in the background of Genshiken, though it seems to be a "second" season barely related to the few episodes that were done for Genshiken. The included Genshiken OVA is classic. "No, this is what I use!"
Hare + Guu 2: seemed not as funny as #1.
Netflix seems to have implemented a series shipping policy, so that it won't ship vol 2 before vol 1 because 1 is long wait. Which is great, and means I won't have to manually fiddle with series, but also bad, in that the way I found out about it was that when I hijacked my mother's queue when she went on the pilgrimage to Lake Louise, it shipped #1, then skipped the series, and shipped more of her movies, which I have to send back, then add to the queue again in 3 weeks. The series: all 18 volumes of Card Captor Sakura. It may prove to be death by cuteness, though also likely to look horribly dated.
Stargate Continuum: I thought it dragged a bit, up until Landry delivers the smack-down. All action from then on. First time I heard the wormhole effect in 5.1, well worth it. Much more The SG-1 Movie than The Ark, which was more the final season they didn't get to do.
Tokyo Majin: Vol. 1: Dark Arts: Dragon Stream: The prologue is excellent, the first episode is very good, but it lags some as it goes on.
Hare + Guu: Vol. 1: "Penguin no Mondai" level gags, animation quality, except funny. Hilarious, even. "Three second rule." "Cool and hip."
Initial D: Special Edition: Much faster moving (ha ha) than the anime at 1/5 the size. The car is much more Cerulean Blue-ish in person. Cruel to the poor girl, though. Nobody wants a used loli.
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay: not equal to the other one.
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs: Oddly touching, and not just with the tentacles. Only David Cross could turn mass tentacle rape into something heart warming.
Jury Duty: A police officer delivered a document ordering me to Trenton Oct 16. (Registered mail not scary enough for them?) When I got a notice telling me to expect a call earlier in the year, I was looking forward to it. Now I get to look forward to a 4 hour trip in, and a 4 hour trip back, for nearly 6 months. They are gracious enough to provide a $5 subsidy. So, if you commit crimes in New Jersey you can rest assured that you will receive a fair hearing from somebody with a rotting spine who Just spent $27 and 4 hours traveling to spend even more time in even more uncomfortable chairs. I'll be damned if I ever vote again.
Vacation books: A good Jon Courtenay Grimwood, though I thought 9 Tail Fox better, and a couple short story collections.
Dance of the Drunken Mantis: Now, go berserk and kill! At least this time, the old man seemed evil.
Them!: Not locking people up on your say-so and declaring martial law is pre-Them thinking.
Mysterious Island: Oddly reminiscent of "The Black Hole".
Dai-Guard: Vol. 1: Hostile Takeover: Not as much "Office Space" as the blurb promised.
Fist of the Red Dragon: Edited and dubbed version of another movie (Hero Among Heros).
Kuffs: Crank, for the 80's: good, but entirely too smug and self-aware.
The answer to the burning question of our age: what would it sound like if you took the 4 Magi Pokan ending songs and played them simultaneously.
Innovative legal idea: if buffered copies of songs require RIAA licenses, sue the NSA: wiretapping the internet creates another client copy of every song ever transferred, legal or not. Wait, I forgot the Air Force already decided the government is above such things.
Forbidden City Cop: Funny, though the disc was skipped, the menus were messed up, and it seemed like a lot had been edited out.
Desert Punk: Vol. 1: Enter the Desert: bleh.
I ordered and build a PC from parts, to replace the my brother's box, which had failed power supply, and once that was replaced, something else on the board failed. A first, as my previous builds were crap from the bottom of the junk drawer, not stuff that I had just shelled out money for. Nerd points ++. The only issue was the XP install said I had three days for re-validating, but what it secretly meant was 3 reboots, because it locked me out when the driver installs rebooted the machine repeatedly. Pretty cheap, and I wasn't even cheaper, I'd totally build myself a Windows box just for games.
Natsume Yuujinchou 7: the cutest fox boy ever, and bonus points for being emotional, but not ending horribly, as sad fox stories are prone to.
Initial D: Battle 1: Akina's Downhill Specialist: kind of boring, and not as much of a hatchback as I'd been lead to believe.
Mushi-Shi: Vol. 1, 2: I recall the end of the series being better. Ginko seemed like he was doing a job, and not eternally vaguely inconvenienced with sore feet. Still good, though.
Commander Vines killed the all-green in the same pot. I guess he doesn't have a partner. The others are pretty much as they were. Gordon is still large, but nobody seems to be growing much. They could probably use more plant food.
Hellsing Ultimate 2: saw this before.
The Planet: Bleh. Would only be impressive as a student film. Well, no, not even then.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The greatest Zelda ever. Great plot, great end (I'm looking at you, Majora). The core game was perhaps too easy (perhaps to accommodate the Wii's new controls?), but throw in the Cave of Ordeals (Completed, using 2 blue potions, ended up with 2 Tears and 1 Rare Jelly, but then defeated Ganon with losing only 8 hearts) and the Yeti race, and it all evens out. Woofy Link is cute. Midna is much less annoying that the Hey Listen fairy. (Though I have started doing that sigh at annoying things at work, in other words pretty much all the time.) Agitha was very cute, and very odd. Money was also oddly proportioned: there are a number of things that are very expensive, yet nearly useless, and at times you are drowning in 100 Rupee coins, far beyond your ability to carry them. The Temple of Time started to feel sort of Halo-y: futuristic complex, weird creatures in a containment area, knowing that it is only going to get worse from here. The Sky city was depressing: the last of the ancient Hyrulians are mutant chickens in a rotting city? Idea: a prequel, about forging Ol' Pot Smasher, the Master Sword, where 3 heros from a small town defeat bullies, bandits, invaders, then invade other areas, finally bringing peace to all Hyrule. Your two friends would set up quests and sneak into enemy castles to open the doors, then you would go in and smash things. The novel bit would be you would not be Triforce of Courage, but Strength, and would be forced into making a series of questionable moral decisions that would seem like a good idea at the time (like stealing a tribe's god, to add it to the Master Sword, even if it requires killing its protectors and boss monster), but leave you unable to wield the force of good you just created. The hero of courage would defeat the source of evil, leaving you bitter and dark, thus setting up the classic triangle of wise ruler, strong villain and courageous hero. The story telling would have to leave you both angry as the people view you as bloodthirsty monster, but also sad to know what lies farther down that path.
Dark Star: Great concept, but total boredom.
The Hidden: Not all that bad. A stripper appearance by C. C., a cute dog, and a year old blue hatchback.
Aliens vs. Predator 2: As promised, awful. The writing was much better in this one, in that the movies this lifted huge sections from were better written.
Seconds: Twist ending, and then twistier ending. Middle part not so much. If even the hippy orgy couldn't keep my attention, that is boring.
Cloverfield: Ultimately, meh, but an interesting Zilla update: as our cities dwarf even the mightiest Zilla, one can no longer simply stomp Tokyo.
I saw a fox! Possibly two foxes!! There was a shower of droplets from a pine tree and something brown shot around and behind another pine, but following that was definitely a fox. By that point I was actually looking there and got a clear glimpse of half (and not the half that eats) a fox. It was at the tail end of the Lamont campus of Columbia university. I also caught up to and paced somebody on 9W for miles. I was falling behind, but still had him in sight when I turned off.
Turok: Son of Stone: Gory!
Film Crew: Giant of Marathon: One of the better ones, though they really need to make fun of better movies. Or at least movies with less ass.
Summer Anime:
Winner: Natusme Yuujinchou, but Himitsu, Slayers, World might also provide solid if senseless entertainment. No perverted wolf-girls.
Books: numerous Ian McEwan: not as tragic as I was hoping for. The Prefect, Alastair Reynolds: now that's the stuff, though it seems the local libraries are missing one of his. That this probably referenced it while also dropping clues made reading this confusing: did I not remember that historical fact, or was I supposed to file that as a clue?
Noriko's Dinner Table: Deeply insane. Related to "Suicide Club" which was merely very insane.
Heroes of the East: An historical tsun-dere, 1979 strata. Excellent fu, though the Crab Fist is hilarious. Dr. Zoid-fu!
Come Drink with Me: Shunt aside, mofo. Weird subtitles, but a modern "kong fu" epic, larval stage. The woman would later be the Jade Fox.
Blood Diamond: Meh. The blood diamond trade and Sierra Leone may be better, but it's still Africa. Even the coltane in the cell phones is implicated in atrocities.
Film Crew: Wild Women of Wongo: Women in fur bikinis gone horribly wrong.
Tai Chi 2: Excellent fu, comprehensible plot
Long Kiss Goodnight: back when we believed the government was competent enough to actually pull off a faked terrorist attack. Those were the days. All star cast, including S. L. Jackson (the S is for SNAKES!). Contains the immortal lines "I fought my way out of Beruit. I can handle getting out of New Jersey.". "I don't know. Others have tried and failed. The entire population, for example."
Flight of the Conchords: Season 1: never not funny, but never really engaged me, either. Maybe watching them back to back was too much, concentrated. I did like the Hiphopopotamus.
In the Line of Duty 4: OK movie, but is that what they think of the US police? Though they did have a point about the Contras.
The Buddhist Fist: another in the series of Yuen Wo Ping's psychotically weird plots breaking up solid fight scenes.
Death Duel of Kung Fu: Not much plot, but loads of old school fu.
Colossus: The Forbin Project: Great ending.
I Am Legend: Not in favor of the whole God angle, but a good movie.
Legends of the Poisonous Seductress: Vol. 1: Female Demon Ohyaku: Mostly, I just like the phrase "pinky violence". The movie itself has aged in shocking with sex, violence, plot.
Hitman: the trailers were a better movie.
Dragon Tiger Gate: meh.
War: Far more a 70's cop thriller than the stars' fu and the marketing would suggest, but as such, not bad.
A Dog's Breakfast: A Star Gate off-season production. Funny, but do you really need that much more Rodney?
The Last Sentinel: Fine bit of cheese.
Stargate: The Ark of Truth: Very nice. Possibly one too many Indiana Jones references, but a really nice end to the series.
The Day of the Triffids: Not the movie. The girl was cute, but a lot of politics, and the Triffids reminded one of pantomime geese.
The Sword of Doom: Referenced a lot of Japanese history that I knew enough of to know I was missing.
Kurenai: Not bad, but I wish they did not have the horn, which was just weird and ultimately pointless, and more on his fighting style, which was independently cool and had an actual plot point.
I Am Omega: Finally, a movie that would make one long for JCVD. Awful, predictable, and irritating.
Ever Since the World Ended: post-plague faux documentary. Not the most engaging. I'd love to try to make my own, perhaps as a sarcastic ex-programmer serving as an engineer for a youth gang, proving a humorous internal monolog.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Indestructible Man: Indigestible.
Kill Zone / SPL: slow in spots, but excellent fu and a melodramatic ending. The fights are very mixed martial arts inspired. Great commentary track.
Doomsday Gun: A bit too short on technical details for me, and there is one shot where the camera crew is clearly visible in a window, but pretty engrossing. There was also a bit set in 1988 that was clearly using System 7. Contains the immortal line "Do it! Do it now, because I'm taller than you!".
Robot Chicken: Uneven humor, but humor.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Tormented: Actually not a bad movie.
I looked at the VLC source code, to see if I could waste my summer vacation on the subtitle support. Aside from the ugliness of the code (Hungarian! spaces! Missing {}!), the massive process OSX requires to build, the near total lack of documentation/comments (in English, at least, possibly due to its French heritage), and nearly complete lack of test cases, it appears to already have ASS/SSA formatting recognition and display! It even filters out the {comments} that some people use to bad-mouth VLC! (Although I think it requires a \{, while they use just {.) I could try tweaking the i_stop if you are f-forwarding, or using the screen bottom instead of the picture bottom, or the personally useful always load the first available subtitle for mkv files, but I could probably waste the week getting to the point where it builds. Working on why what it already appears to do doesn't actually happen would be a full time job. Getting it to use the Mac graphics to do the font rendering is probably too much to ask. I tried compiling the core .h, so I could write a test rig for just the subtitles, and couldn't even get that to work, either. Perian and QT is not as nice or as universal, but also does not involve me wading neck deep into that monster build file just to figure out how it is configuring the includes. I also looked at Chroma, which also uses Perian for mkv viewing. It displays correctly, but only loads the subtitles after the entire movie "processes", and crashed, which is not acceptable in software that wants money. NicePlayer + Perian appears to be the Mac mkv winner, for functioning, using the scroll wheel to scrub video, but still displays text over other text, and doesn't offer variable fast forward.
Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society: I believed this was a movie version of the series, but it is not. It is a stand-alone movie. (Ha ha) I would also recommend watching the movie twice. For example, note the number of open recharging stations before the Major says controlling 2 is her limit.
![BELO[CONCRETE]](2008/kellygravereveal.jpg)
Further crimes of contractor Kelly ((201) 934-8700): his men buried Sparky the ferret's grave in leftover concrete. This might be merely unforgivable if the grave was simply in a hollow under the Forsythia, however, I'm guessing the gravestone might have been something of a clue. Even if they couldn't read "Beloved ferret" in English, the fact that it says anything at all should have been enough to not dump concrete on it. If he had asked, they could have dumped all the concrete waste the job produced under where the deck was going. That clearly happened when the original deck went in, to judge from the junk under there. The spot of lawn where he left all those mystery cinderblocks died, too. As a side effect of every rain fall washing more sand out of the pavers, the pavers continue to migrate, and several more have popped out. I wouldn't blame him for this, although it probably is the fault of shoddy base prep work, but it is also now infested with ants.
More gifts that say you are shabby: new towels.
ControllerMate: unbelievably slick. With one notable exception, replaced all the functionality of the Logitech Control Center in seconds, and went on beat it so badly that its grandchildren died. The notable exception being it is not doing scroll wheel acceleration. I don't scroll web pages with it, because I reassigned the page up and down key presses to 2 of the buttons, but you don't know how much else you scroll until it suddenly becomes very slow. On the plus side, it is on the TODO list, and I now have modifier key control over the mouse buttons, so Option Button 5 can copy, while Ctrl Button 5 pastes. I haven't even started cheating at games, yet. This also might be crazy, but I'd swear the mouse and keyboard response is faster. [Update]: the page up and down mouse buttons are still triggering wheel scrolls, even though the button action is off, which is very irritating in games.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Eegah!: One of the better ones.
Sunshine: this close to being "Cold Equations"-esque real hard SF, then they pissed it away the Thing That Is Too Horrible To Show, Except This Is a Visual Medium, So We Have Show Something. Also required subtitles, so thick were most of the accents.
Atonement: Very Iain Banks. Look up Ian McEwan.
YouTube Report: Haruhi + Sailor Fuku, Haruhi + Lucky Star +Caramelldansen, but not that dance. Speaking of which, the Cara-Merle-dansen. I drew out the actual dance on the back of my health insurance documents, but clip art is the limit of my mouse skills, and I only really wanted to make that pun, anyway.
MST3K: Starfighters: terrible movie. They weren't even trying with a plot. Let's have another 6 minutes of refueling!
I always thought Mary Worth would be a good kung-fu comic. [Update: acclaim!]
One Missed Call: An American movie, but still very Japanese horror. Now if it only made any sense.
Tables: Excellent at opening the excel spreadsheets people send me without the monster start time of OO/X, and a decent if not fully featured spreadsheet. However, at more than 50 USD, I think I'll wait. Perhaps the Mac native OO3 will help.
Alien vs. Predator: Much was made over the decision to redo two gore-tastic movies as PG-13. I don't think that was that bad, and certainly not nearly as bad as the near total ignorance of scientific facts. Nearly everything that Italian guy said was wrong. Fluffy action, but offensively stupid. Would have been vastly better as a super-hero movie, focusing more on the AvP fights, which were the coolest parts of the movie. Coincidentally, I saw a snippet of this movie on TV last weekend, and made fun of it instantly.
Bravo 2 0: post ironic Gulf War movie. The opening and closing bits pretty much sum up Bush's War.
Good night and good luck: Perhaps Stewart and Colbert are the ultimate evolution of television: giving the increasingly complacent masses a real view on the country's policies in the middle east, but without boring them in the process or coming off as a patrician elite and the Jewish conspiracy, as McCarthy would put it.
Avalon: A Polish Japanese production, certainly not something you'd see everyday. Slow in spots, but very odd. Music by Higurashi's Kawai.
There will be blood: meh. Seemingly pointless.
Locked myself out of the house. Cost $100, and all day, and right after, the person who had my spare key showed up. One must resolve to bear up as Binchou-tan would: by not having a door. Right before that, we had a spirited discussion with contractor (T. F. Kelly Construction Inc, New Jersey, 201 934 8700) who insisted that despite random concrete blobs jutting as much as 30 cm above the lawn, everything could easily be fixed with landscaping by raising the level of the lawn to cover it. Every other local installation has the driveway level with the lawn, so raising the lawn concept comes as a bit of a surprise. We didn't even get to the flaws in the pavers, like the finger-sized holes, the fact that the giant concrete support blobs (a recurring theme) are already migrating away from the pavers, the weird asymptotic curve, and that one brick is already completely loose. Later, the CO alarm went off while I was in the shower. So the tiredness I was feeling might have been deadly poisons, plus my spiders, who excel at neutralizing such things, were asleep for the night.
I ate an entire thing of Americone Dream to celebrate Stephen's birthday.
Eureka: The early episodes only make a few minor science mistakes, but as it goes on, it gets further into pseudoscience and newage. Sigh. Invokes the rich meaty stink of B&B's Star Trek.
Legal Digital TV:
Appleseed Ex Machina: Very nice graphics, and the music is under the hypnotic tutelage of Haruomi Hosono. To nit-pick, the skin tone is better than the previous one, but was noticeably flatter than the rest of the art. Part of that is that the rest of the art is near photo-realistic and they might not beable to cross the uncanny valley.
Day Watch: Magic Chalk saves the day? The Juicebox of Doom? The Yo-Yo of Mass Destruction? How old are the writers?
The Master: pretty high profile movie to suck so badly.
The new dvd drive caused a moment of panic when the plastic front plate was just a little too low to pass over the bit that controls the case's metal front plate. (Curse Steve and his relentless pursuit of perfection!) Fortunately, the plastic bit was removable, if given enough force. I hope it doesn't let more dust in with the laser, but with the computer up on the desk, there wasn't much dust in the rest of the case anyway. A second moment of panic: VLC wouldn't play the disk, though it had clearly mounted. Apple's DVD Player, however, set the region code, and now all is well. (Curse you, Dr. M! I'm surprised VLC even cared.) The important bit: it loaded on the first try the same disk the old drive wouldn't in 10 attempts. And it needn't have bothered:
Once upon a time in China 3: meh. Fights went for colossal spectacle, ended up with confusing.
Shower: seems a next step in emotional Chinese film making, but I didn't care.
Bride with White Hair 2: More light-hearted, for a while, what with the lesbian death cult, then everybody dies.
Death Machine: Big budget fan movie, not nearly as bad as the title or many bits of the movie would suggest.
Spring Anime:
Winner: Kitsune FTW! A huge number of passable series, and I didn't even watch the very gay ones.
I was rearranging my furniture, and one of the legs on the table went wonky. I pushed the loose screw back in, and went for a screwdriver, and the whole thing collapsed! Dirt everywhere! Save spiders with tentacles first! The shade on the lamp tore, and all the table legs were ripped out. I repotted the fallen spiders. They had lost a lot of roots, and probably could have used a repotting, anyway. I should get another bag of dirt. Now I don't have a dining room table, and the dining room is populated with angry spiders. I didn't move the computer, either.
Simpson's Movie: funny. Odd that the nudity and drug use are acceptable for PG13 ("irreverant humor throughout") if animated. To the same song: Spiderplant, spiderplant, not doing those things that a spiderplant can't. Grow a leave, grow a root, try a flower, that'll be cute.
I started writing haiku while bored at the biweekly meeting of doom:
Wasting time at work.
It's not a haiku unless:
nature reference.
Does time move backward?
How can it be 2:30?
Was an hour ago.
Double U T F,
even when read weekly,
shows jobs worse than mine.
Form builder, train wreck,
six of one, half a dozen,
all down hill from here.
My mind wandered further:
A nekomimi
provokes my pervert passions
when seen in moonlight.
kitsunemimi:
fox spirit, can eat your soul.
What could be better?
Okami Horo
Put some clothes on, or don't.
Either works for me.
Blonde hair, black tip ears.
But to whom could this belong?
We could ask Basho.
Those long pointy ears,
curly hair, big eyes, a tail,
what's up with that nose?
Men in Tights: Cary Elwes is excellent, but it drags a bit.
Blazing Saddles: I have now seen the source of a number of cultural references, but the ending fell apart.
I had some Americone Dream to celebrate Stephen Jr.'s birthday.
Futurama movie: not more funny than a good episode, but still nice to hear that tune again.
Young Frankenstein: an oddly faithful, up to a point, retelling.
Ratatouille: Did not spot Pixar inside jokes, but it has all the character that Cars lacked. The rats look kind of like ferrety muppets.
Warriors of Heaven and Earth: uneven, and left with the vague sense it is Chinese propaganda.
Puppet Princess: a nice little ani-nugget.
Ghost in the Shell + Maria = lol
I noticed while reading my own site that Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, Bamboo Blade were not ranked highest for last fall. Not only is that a mistake then, but both are better than all of the new winter shows.
Some time ago I tried to ask on the Marathon message board if what I saw really was the end Eternal X, but it ate my message. I lurked and saw a lot of things that weren't there for me, so I replayed the last level at higher difficultly level, and it let me pass. That really is a worthy Marathon 4. A great use of the Pathways characters.
7 Grand Masters: Massive Sideburns Attack! Unleash the Kano Ahsu Woo Ping style!
Linda Linda Linda: slow. A plus is that in talking to the Korean girl, they had to speak simply enough for me to understand. Also, the similarity to the opening bit to Zetsubo Sensei leads to mapping all the characters. What the hell was up with the giant hand?
The Hidden Blade: Oddly similar yet inferior to "Twilight Samurai". The Hidden Blade itself was slick, but lost in a rambling mass. For example, as cute as Bun-chan is, that entire character could easily have been removed, and it would have made a tighter movie. No hiding behind the original work!
The Fearless Avenger: Very 70's, but the music is oddly cool, and I want one of those hats, though I've seen bigger.
Under Siege: did not age well, much like Segal.
Twilight Samurai: A kind of Binchou-tan samurai. Very nice, and the girls are totemo kawaii.
Repo Man: very Subgenius.
Legend of Seven Monks: the product of a freaky incestuous love in the afterlife between Kung-fu and Anime. Quasi-Buddhist magic! Maid Cafe! That African guy! Cosplay! Montages! MONK FIGHT VERSION UP!!!! Two problems: there appears to be a much larger story lurking in the background (Like just who was that guy stabbed with the statue? Did you really need all 7 when most are ignored at the end to focus on the massive monk mauling? No running down the path of sticking to the original work!), and worst of all, they took meganekko-chan's glasses away!
Vacation Books:
Porco Rosso: hmm. Not as charming, but is that really a complaint?
District B13: Euro Vin Diesel
I got a five minute average of 95 MPG on Binchou-tan, the Prius, while still driving normally. The key was nobody was behind me so I could cost as long as possible. Even at 50 MPG, it could go a full round trip on the NJ Parkway on a single tank.
Electric Dragon 80000 Volts: student film. Did feature an odd appearance of "Bob".
Kamikaze Girls: charming, and Rococo.
Cars: not one of the better efforts. The little touches were drowned in the boredom that is nascar.
MST3K: Teenage Strangler: average effort
Hidden Fortress: These are not the droids you are looking for. Also, the princess's shorts make her look like she has a front butt.
Doki Doki School Hours #1: animation is crude, not that funny. Best part: teh ghey. Also Ikue Otani.
Death and the Compass: solid material and actors, but unbelievably bad. Goes out of its way to irritate. The big twist is obvious to anyone who knows who The Doctor is, or is not completely blind.
Eternal X Marathon scenario: very nice, and even included the legendary Wave Motion Canon. However, I'm not sure if it had an end. It just started over. Possibly I was playing a too easy a setting, but it still left me questioning what just happened, because in a story with that much time travel, it didn't seem out of place, at first.
End of August at Hotel Ozone: Good post-apocalyptic, starring 9 iterations of Mira Furlan.
A Bridge Too Far: surprisingly good. Cast of thousands.
Jeremiah Johnson: The Anti-Binchou-tan. Although connected to nature, a hunter, rather than a gatherer. Kill all the griz, get into an incomprehensible feud with the Injin, then play a little Musunde Hiraite to make it better.
Stalker: whatever point it was making is lost in the molasses it appears to have been filmed in and with.
Cannon shell meets fuel dump, grunts fly through the air, fall like rain. Should be less whiny.
Stardust: I like a bit of whimsy every now and again.
The Bride with White Hair: Kung-fu Jesus. An incremental step to CT, HD.
The Great Yokai War: insufficient kitsune. They probably wanted residuals.
Desha Otoko: I'm not that pathetic. I aspire to be that pathetic.
My toilet's incoming connection exploded. The one I put in leaked a bit. The plumber put this in.
Halo 3: Very next gen graphics I occasionally had to stop and stare at, and an interesting story. Plus: the return of Marathon-style story terminals, and the flood is really disgusting. Minus: the occasional jaunts into survival horror cliches, and the flood is really disgusting. I beat it on normal in 7 hours, with a lunch break. I can only make slow progress on Heroic. I agree that it is the way it was meant to be played, but I am no longer used to the controller.
Star Gate Atlantis finally produces a hard sci fi episode, also the greatest ever in that it mentions Stephen Colbert as being better than Steve Carrell.
Shoot 'em up: a hysterical ultra-violent cartoon, or the end of American civilization.
Someday's Dreamers: meh.
I found a few nice W:ET servers that don't require punk buster, and have made some progress with it. It still will not remember favorite servers, but I am a general now, and can kill people.
Black Lagoon 1: Nice, but nothing particularly special, so far at least. I'm glad I saw this after Binchou-tan or I'd have a plan to be a pirate in the South Pacific. I could do both, I suppose. Binchou-tan comes with a built-in floatation device.
Bad news in the stock market means bad news for Project Binchoustan, though not by much, because I am still not that close to the really huge numbers. I may declare a half-time and buy a new mattress, and hope the market has finished collapsing by the summer.
More tooth problems: the phrase "Gum Grafts" was mentioned, and a nerve may be dead. There were several other entries made into the computer that they didn't tell me about, and took an extra set of xrays. I never get good dental news early in the year.
I think the grapefruit and lilac died. One of them might still be alive, and I don't know which is which. With a dead spider, this has not been a good year for plants on the floor.
Paprika: Add some spice! Satoshi Kon is one weird dude. The later half of Paranoia Agent makes more sense if you imagine this story happening in the background. The music was worth setting up the surround sound speakers. Gah!
Knocked up: Except for Wash, pretty boring up until VLC crashed halfway through, which was the first time it did that in ages. You know a movie is bad when the software kills itself rather than play it.
MST3K: Sinister Urge: they are getting into the Early Mike Years, which I haven't seen. This was very funny.
Winter 2008 Likely winner: Horo is cool and spicy!
Winner: There are a number of shows with above average art, and a number of good stories. Now if only they were the same shows. I will have to hand the title to W&S (Or from your point of view, M S, Maggie Simpson!) based entirely on Horo's personality, and the obviously fine quality of her ears and tail.
Crash, not the Ballard one: everyone could have done with a big dose of the Binchou-tan Lifestyle.
Die Hardest: Not the first one, but certainly a massive spectacle, and the computer stuff didn't fill me with rage, which is about the best I can ask for any more.
Serenity: I liked it, even if River is not Xena.
Shinobi: I kind of liked Basilik's total bummer ending better.
Project Binchoustan is ahead of schedule, (beating the weather machine and germ warfare divisions!) despite poor returns last year. With 6% average return for a maximum of $17,000 a year, ETB (Estimated Time to Bin) is a mere 18 months, perhaps plus another 6 for a more generous cash cushion. Those numbers still need the 8% historical average to make $25,000 a year, but I can live with less. On the other hand, I still have not stopped obsessing about it, and a recent article in the NYT pointed out that people who have too much hope do worse than people who are just resigned to their fates. It would be best if at the end of one year I totaled all the accounts and discovered I had passed a magic number. Instead, I have a spreadsheet listing various scenarios maximizing annual income or ETB. So the sooner I can at least declare victory, the better I'll feel. Even if I still have to work for another 6 - 15 months, I will be able to spend vast sums on luxury items, like new socks.
-- Patrick Phelan, now more than ever. w____\\W//___w Te Hupenui Quiet Student of Untaught Knowledge http://mysite.verizon.net/fantod/
