Ahhhh, moments of candor.
Photographically enhanced to bring out the, uh, detail.
All posts by Dan
Images and Words
Witness the power of a good informational graphic.
Hero
Whoof. I’m not sure what I walked into the theater expecting. A martial-arts movie with above-average production values, most likely. Certainly not what I got, right between the eyes: an epic tragedy with larger-than-life characters, sacrifices, and visuals.
The word that kept coming into my head as I watched was “beautiful”. Beautiful sets. Beautiful costumes. Beautiful actors. Beautiful movement. Beautiful music. Beautiful cinematography.
There is nothing about this movie that is not a feast for the senses, but its use of color, so central to the way the story is told that it’s almost a character in its own right, deserves special mention. Most movies could be desaturated down to black and white without much loss of substance, but not this one. You’d do less damage — although, admittedly, not much — completely muting the soundtrack instead.
Is it a perfect movie? No. It bogs down a bit in seeming repetition toward the end. (Or, as Paul said afterward, “Waitaminute, didn’t we kill these guys four times already?”) Also, it’s at least as Wuxia as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with which it will inevitably be compared, so if the sight of two master swordsmen engaging in a duel while they skip like stones across the surface of a lake causes you suspension-of-disbelief problems, this is probably not the movie for you. Lastly, it’s subtitled, but if that’s a problem for you, you need to see a doctor. Philistine.
How to Torture an Idiot
Tell him that there is now a locked copy of Half-Life 2 sitting on his machine, inches away from his itching hands, and that he’ll be able to unlock it… Real Soon Now. (It’s just as well, I suppose. This gives me a chance to dig the registration number I got from ATI out of the disaster that is my office filing system, and thereby avoid feeling like a completely different and more acute class of idiot.)
The Fine Line, Pt. II
Well, chalk up two more points in the “wanker” column. I just ordered these:
Huh. I just noticed that the Elites have two opposable thumbs per hand, one on each side. Nice. I never caught that in the game, but then I suppose I was too busy trying to shoot them in the head to pay much attention to their hands.
The Fine Line
There is a fine line between “enthusiast” and “wanker” — and I seem to do my level best to skate a wavy path alongst it. Case in point: my “friend” Alex made me aware of the MonsterGecko PistolMouse FPS the other day.
At first glance, it looks like a cheesy gimmick devised mainly for the purpose of separating gullible wannabe badasses from their money. Closer inspection, however, reveals disquieting signs that actual thought, care, and attention went into its design. For instance, one of the drawbacks of regular mice for games is the placement of the scroll wheel: either you move your index finger off the primary mouse button to use it, or you manipulate it with your less-dextrous middle finger. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please: my middle finger is more than up to the task of dealing with the likes of you.)
MonsterGecko’s design puts each control under its own finger, with the scroll wheel under the strongest and most nimble digit, the thumb. In addition, they’ve placed the optical sensor far forward, so that a little yawing of the wrist will let you rotate your view to one side or another. Finally, the triggers, at least, are made of anodized aluminum. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I seem to have a crow-like fascination for the stuff lately, this further belies the notion that this thing was slapped together to make a quick buck. True shysters would have used the cheapest plastic they could find and had done with it.
So, of course, I had to order one. We’ll see whether this makes me a wanker or a badass in mid-September, when it’s supposed to ship.
(No, wait, it’s official. I’m definitely a wanker. Otherwise I’d have ordered mine from ThinkGeek, who actually have them in stock. Damn.)
Southern Comfort
A bout of smack-talking on a private mailing list as to who could cook the best southern food led to a showdown at Art & Lisa’s: specifically, dinner, consisting of fried chicken, cornbread, and collard greens, among other delectables. Dessert consisted of no less than three different kinds of homemade pie, each more delicious than the last, consumed while watching Undercover Brother. There’s something strangely apt about the theatrical selection, but I’m not sure it bears too much thinking about. Afterward the movie, we played a round of Chez Geek, a game I’m coming to love despite the fact that I’ve yet to win. No victor was officially announced in the cook-off, although I think Lisa would have to be declared the winner on the merits of her pie alone. Oof, I’m full.
A Note About The Title
This blog was named for a parking-lot epiphany I had sometime in the spring of this year, 2004, when I realized that the war in Iraq just really wasn’t going as well as might be hoped. Somehow I had been reluctant to let myself acknowledge this: in realizing the inhibition’s cause, I overcame it.
There is a notion running loose in our culture, one I’m inclined to glibly blame on a glut of crowd-pleasing war and sports movies, that you can accomplish just about anything if your cause is noble, your heart is pure, and above all, if you just believe hard enough.
What’s lost between the rousing soundtrack and slow-motion charge is the realization that belief, while necessary, is not sufficient. Yes, you need determination to win, but for every hero who gritted his teeth and forged ahead to glory, there are ten more whose dessicating remains now litter the roadside as evidence to the fact that right does not always make might. (People like to talk about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team. They’re less likely to bring up, say, the Warsaw Ghetto.)
And so it’s come to this: at the dawn of the twenty-first century we are, as a country, grappling with the idea that the war will be won or lost not because we succeeded or failed to put enough troops into the theater, not because we enlisted or completely alienated our allies, not because we understood or utterly ignored the local culture, not because we chose principle or expediency when deciding how to treat detainees, but because the home audience, thousands of miles from the zone of conflict, slacked off when it came to waving the pom-poms.
Thus the sock puppets for those who got us into this mess exhort us to continue doing what hasn’t helped so far, sure that it will work if we just do it harder than ever. They’re like Peter Pan halfway through the stage version of J.M. Barrie’s story, urging the audience to save the fading Tinkerbell through the sheer force of their belief. Somehow a benign children’s fantasy has become grotesque talk-radio reality. Drink all of the Kool-Aid! Keep the faith! Believe! Believe! Believe!
Or fuck it. Wake up. Realize that the Emperor isn’t going to get any less naked because you refrain from pointing out that he’s not wearing clothes, and focus your passion in a direction where it will actually make a difference. If this blog’s title becomes an antibody for the meme which holds that remarking upon the bleeding obvious is somehow an act of disloyalty, I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something.
Inaugural
“Well — here I am.”
Jubal Early, “Objects In Space”
Faisal has apparently grown tired of waiting for me to get my shit together, and so has decided that the time has come to give me a little push, in the form of a Blogger invitation. Fine and good. I’m not sure exactly what he anticipates from this blog, but, having known me for over a decade, he’ll have little excuse for being surprised. He, and, for that matter, you, should expect to see some general pissing and moaning about the generally retarded state of the world and its inhabitants, along with more specialized pissing and moaning about the state of computing hardware in particular. Let the games begin!