The House: Day One

Things accomplished:

Garage cleaned out, cobwebs removed. Front drive and street swept, yard waste removed. Back deck swept, back porches swept, yard waste removed. Purple room and pink room spackled, caulked, sanded, and ready to be primed. Removed den door (discard). Removed spare closet piece (purple room). Removed purple room and pink room doors (will replace). Removed broken doorstops. Explored removing popcorning, found it came off easier than expected. Explored sanding drywall underneath; sands easily. Will removed popcorning from entire house.

This week: remove popcorning from den, and old carpet, in preperation for new carpet next weekend. Priming pink and purple rooms on hold. Call about refurbishing bathroom.

Trail Mix

Yesterday I joined Jon, Seth, Matt, and Chris for a hike in Couger Mountain Park - which is right up the road from Bellevue. The plan was to hike a 3.7-mile loop and see an old anti-aircraft gun; we ended up straying a little off course and went a little longer than expected, but I have to say it was a hell of a workout and although I felt winded during the hike, I felt pretty darn good afterwards. I'd be very interested in doing more such hikes around the area, especially as the weather gets nicer. Hint hint.

And So It Begins

Last Thursday we got the keys to the house.

Yesterday we drove over to survey the joint.

Last night, we hit Home Depot for the first round of needful things.

Today, we're up early and going to do some work.

First on my list: assemble the lawn mower and mow.

I've already got my plan of attack. Just like dad taught me.

And I realized: I'm turning into my father.

Musical: Monty Python's Spamalot

Being that I was in New York eight days after Monty Python's Spamalot opened, it was my geekly duty to attend. So I procured a great ticket and attended after the last day of Toy Fair.

How was it you ask?

Let me put it like this: I would fly back to New York JUST to see this musical again.

It's not Holy Grail. The characters are (mostly) the same, there are some of the same scenes, and the plot begins in the same way, but Spamalot is a Pythonization of musicals both modern and classic. The jokes are great (and it's the first new Python material in quite a while, so Eric Idle had some time to prepare), and the songs - well, the songs demonstrate why last year's Team America: World Police is amateurish and poorly refined.

Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce, and Hank Azaria were very much into the show, as was the rest of the cast. They were having fun, and it gave the show an unbelievable energy. The audience was having a great time too, singing along with familiar songs (and the cast invited us into a great sing-along after the bow). And their was audience particpation! "Behind the fourth wall" was one of the lines from a song. Even my program has a fake listing for the latest Finnish national musical... which of course is how Spamalot starts.

If you're a geek - or if you're a norm - see Spamalot. See it with the original cast. Today. Now. What are you waiting for? Stop reading this, and get your ticket!

Movie: The Aviator

Yesterday was officially my day off, but I went into the office anyway for about an hour, and then headed over to Angela's because for some reason I thought she was going to move yesterday. She introduced me to The Sims, a game more addicitve than it has the right to be. I hate addictive games. They are antithetical to progress on my creative projects.

I headed back to Bellevue to attend a going-away party for a guy who's leaving my company, after which Seth and I hit the nearby theater and took in The Aviator. I had a preconceived fear that I wouldn't like the movie because I don't like Martin Scorsese, but I was glad to be wrong: the film was great. I'm not sure if it's "best picture" great, but since I don't give two shits about the Oscars anymore, I'm not really comparing it like that in my mind. It was very "non-Scorseee" in that he dropped a lot of the intentionally gritty and numb feelings he typically uses in his films for a much more emotionally involved and personal portrayal of Howard Hughes.

Airplanes and a love for flying are the still points around which the rest of the movie turns. It's great watching Hughes tear into corrupt Senators, and there's a feeling of elation when the "Spruce Goose" takes off, but the best bits are when he's flying his experimental aircraft. Leo (and Angela was right, Goddamn he was a great actor in this!) portrays a Hughes who succeeds by and large by his own force of personality; the women, the airplanes, his business, is all conducted in a way that says "well, no one's told me I couldn't do this, and even if they did I wouldn't believe them, so let's do it," an attitidue I have to respect.

Scorsese did good. Not only would I watch this movie again, I would buy it on DVD.

Book: House of Leaves

My "airplane reading" and hotel reading on the trip out was Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, something Liz and I picked up the other day on the "highly recommended" endcap at Barnes & Noble. This book is difficult to describe, at best. The story revolves around a Nobel-winning photographer, Will Navidson, and his family as they move into a new house in Virginia. They soon discover that their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And it seems to be growing. And a new doorway sprouts in one of their rooms, with a hallway inside of indeterminate (and changing) length. This new labyrinth seems harmless at first, but takes a sinister turn when something inside it starts to growl.

House of Leaves is a horror novel, but it's a post-modern work that utilizes tools created by authors like Nabokov and Borges, while firmly placing itself as a great piece of literature in its own right. The story is "told" through the book House of Leaves, notes on the documentary film that Navidson shot about his house. Another story is told through the footnotes by the compiler and editor, an unstable young man rendered even moreso by reading about the house. There are resounding echoes of Pale Fire and Charles Kinbote here, but House of Leaves is much more. Every technique Danielewski utilizes has some meaning or bearing on the tale: the physical cover of the book is smaller than the pages inside, mirroring the house; footnotes lead to other footnotes lead to the appendix lead back to footnotes, at one point miring the reader in a twisting labyrinth much like the characters in the novel; photographs mix with letters and poems, shopping lists, and scholarly notes; sources both real and made-up are cited in the same breath. The singer Poe (sister of the author) even created her album, Haunted, to mirror the events in the book.

But on the other hand, House of Leaves is a classic horror story, where unexplained (and thankfully, never explained) events turn something ordinary into something twisted, sinister, and ultimately dangerous. The characters explore this at length, and turn to Heidegger, who discussed the idea of "being in the world" which causes existential dread; although the characters note that Heidegger used the term "sein nicht-zu-Hause," literally meaning "being not-at-home," implying that dread comes from being outside of a comforting area, like a house. One of the key elements of any horror story is the perversion of the "safe" into the unsafe, and that is exactly where Danielewski succeeds: his characters never realize just how dangerous the house is until it's much too late.

House of Leaves is the kind of book you'll love or hate. It's got more than a little Nabokov and Borges knitted into it, so if you like either of those writers, Leaves is probably a good bet. My suggestion: when the book refers to the appendixes or footnotes, follow it. Get lost. It makes for a much more disturbing reading experience.

The Gates

The Gates is a large-scale piece of performance art in Central Park by Christo and Jeanne Claude, the artists who, among other things, wrapped the Reichstag in plastic. The premise is that 23 miles of walking paths in Central Park would be lined with large orange gates 12 feet high, and from those gates hang large swaths of orange canvas. The artists have been interested in this project since the 1970s, and it finally came to fruition this year. It was only scheduled to run from February 12th through February 27th, so I thought I'd stop by and take a look. The hours for Toy Fair prevented me from going in the daytime, unless I went in the morning, so I got up early on Monday, was greeted with a nice dusting of snow, and set off.

Unfortunately, either through my own technological ineptitude, my shivering hands, or something else, I was only able to snap one decent picture:



Click on the picture for a high-resolution version.

The Gates seems to be an interesting experiment. The most striking thing about it is that it's a bunch of giant orange metal-and-canvas things in the middle of the only green area on Manhattan, a man-made intrusion into nature. But Central Park itself is a natural intrusion to an island that has become, for better or worse, almost entirely man-made. And Central Park itself is suspect: the entire park (or the park south of the reservoir anyway) is not natural, but completely man-made, too. Every path, every tree, every hill was graded and planned with precision.

I'm not sure what it all means, but it did require me to think a little.

Back From Toy Fair

I got in yesterday afternoon and (believe it or not) went directly from the airport to work and worked for about three hours. At the end, I was pretty much a worthless zombie, but I actually managed to write an article for a magazine and get almost everything done I had to get done (mainly, sort through my emails).

I've got lots of posts to make, so I'd better get to it!

Pizza the Hut!

This was posted on a website to make fun of it, but I actually think it's kind of cool, so this post is for Anne.

You can now order pizza from within EverQuest 2, without ever leaving the game.

OK, now that I type that, I'm getting flashbacks of Roman taping alluminum foil over his windows to block out light that might interfere with him playing EverQuest 1.

Movie: Mystic River

I haven't seen this year's Clint Eastwood Oscar-contender Million-Dollar Baby yet (although I know the "twist,"), but I caught up on last year's Eastwood Oscar-contender Mystic River. It was a decent story, and I have to admit that Clint's direction was great. It was more of a character exploration than the murder mystery surface plot, and very well acted too. Not a type of movie I would watch more than once, but certainly worth catching the first time around.

Don't Panic!

Somehow Amazon.com got the exclusive to run the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer. Looks... pretty cool!

It's Life Jim, But Not As We Know It

At least, it might be!

Comic Snobbery

Comic geeks can be some of the most asinine people on the planet. There's the usual Marvel vs. DC baloney, but that's a catfight compared to Indie Comics vs. Mainstream Comics - a false dichotomy if I've ever heard one. The discussion on Time Magazine's Top Ten Comics of 2004 over at Metafilter illustrates the battle perfectly. Note that I'm using the term "Indie" instead of "Indy," to illustrate the difference between houses like Top Cow, Image, and IDW (Indy) with little houses that publish black and white stuff on newsgrade paper (Indie).

My experience with Indie comics is, admittedly, limited. For several reasons. First, I don't find a whole lot of it all that interesting. Take, for example, Ghost World. Ghost World could have been written as a novel and not gained or lost anything from its form as a comic. Ghost World made a better film than it did a comic. And frankly, I couldn't stand the ego of a writer who plugged himself in his own then-unknown book (the characters discuss how much they love Clowes the Underground Artist). Although I would hardly call this a rule, comics should offer something different than what I can either see in a movie or read in a book. There has to be a reason to create something as a comic book, something compelling that attaches story to art. American Splendor and its film adaptation succeeded (and it is, incidentally, one of the few Indie comics I think are worth a damn).

I'm not arguing that Marvel or DC books are better than Indie books - although 100 Bullets is some of the best sequential art I've read in a long time - but that Indie comics aren't as good as their fans think they are. They're kind of like independent films. Sure, the freedom not to be forced to work with a big studio does occasionally produce a decent film, but most of the time you find something amateurish, over-egoized, and extraordinarily self-important - which perfectly sums up my encounters with Indie comics fans.

When I was busy building my freelancer's portfolio back in Tulsa, I did some work for Outline magazine, Tulsa's alternative lifestyle mag (which covered everything from homosexuality to BDSM). One of the editors was this corpulent fucker. Funny, I can't even remember his name, but I want to say it was Warner or Gordon or something. The first time we met, he shook hands and he had this weak, slimy handshake. He proceeded to ask me what I did, and I mentioned that I was a comics fan. He mentioned that he, too, was a comics fan, and asked me what I read. I told him: Fantastic Four, some Vertigo stuff, whatever my comic shop guy recommended, etc. He practically exploded: he didn't read that stuff, no way. Ghost World was his favorite comic. He mentioned a half-dozen others that have been erased by more important data in my memory banks, and extolled the virtues of Indie comics in the midsummer Tulsa heat for a good ten minutes before I found an excuse to leave.

That pretty much sums up my experience with Indie comics fans. I find them to be a lot like Anime Nazis, the people who insist you watch anime with subtitles because the dub ruins it and that yeah, Miyazaki's work is nice and all, but Nubile Gundam Evangeliion Princess Fuckamech 3 is the greatest work of art since the Forbidden Palace was created and if you don't understand that then you're a complete idiot and very likely an anti-Japanese bigot. I've encountered my fair share of those folk in my life, too.

So anyway, this long and lack-of-sleep induced rant isn't really leading anywhere but to me reiterating my dislike for self-aggrandizing pricks who think that anything mainstream is instantly inferior to anything "Indie," whether it's an Indie comic book, and Indie film, some obscure anime, or a role-playing system that five people have heard of and fewer have played.

Band On The Run

Today was running, running everywhere. Work has turned into two things in the last week: getting ready for Toy Fair, and putting out fires. It makes for high-caffiene kind of days, but I need these every now and then.

Last night after the meeting, I banged out 1000 words on the novel. I've got designs on 1000 more tonight.

It's great what a little competition does for the creative soul.

Valentine's Day

This deserves its own post, rather than being tacked on to the "what I did today" post. Yesterday, Liz gave me her Valentines's gift: a sapphire that will be placed in a custom-designed (by her) tie pin. Stylish, sexy, and utilitarian all at the same time - she's good, folks.

Tuesday Night With the Boys

Today was meetings. Nothing but solid meetings. 9 AM conference call with Europe. 10 AM can't even remember what. 11-12, answering emails. Noon to 4, another solid meeting. 4-4:30, a creative-type meeting I insisted I join (stupid, stupid me). 4:30-5:30, answering emails, writing a press release, writing web content for tomorrow, and so on.

Passed on gaming tonight to meet with other Alliterates to discuss fiction. Wolf shamed me by writing five chapters, and I didn't realize how much five chapters was until I downloaded it and went to print it out and thought the little watchdogs at work might wonder what I was doing with company property. So I'll print it a little at a time and get it to him next time. Jeff spun a tight little short story, and all chimed in with helpful comments on my Martian Commies project. Liz hadn't eaten either, so we caught an overexpensive, under-satisfying dinner at Denny's which turned into "draw-ma" when some trashy friend of one of the trashy waitresses showed up with her three-year-old breederspawn and ran amok (yes, the both of them).

That comment was so elitist, but dear God, that was not what I was in the mood to experience after today.

Life Imitates Art

I had a Swingers experience this morning.

Liz had to drive out to one of her company's outlying branch offices, so she was out the door at 6:45. I had to be at work at 9 and spent too much time dicking around with my old DOS programs to walk, so I caught the bus.

Typically I don't really look at the people on the bus when I'm sitting down, I just sit in the front, so I'm facing the opposite windows. There was an empty space, so I sat down.

After I settle in, I notice the other people around me. Across from me was a really - well, a really smoking hot girl. The bus that runs in front of my apartment goes all the way to the University District, so it's not unusual to see college students on the bus. I'm guessing she was a UW student, maybe a freshman or a sophomore.

I notice, but don't really do anything. I settle back, listening to The Offspring and enjoying the ride to work.

I happen to glance over, and she's looking right at me. She smiles. I smile back. I think, "hey, cool, she smiled at me, that's nice. Most people just scowl."

A minute later, I look again. Again, she's looking at me. She beams me a huge smile and kind of mouths "hi." I look down - I left my wedding ring on the counter from doing dishes. I admit, at this point, I'm starting to think, "hey, she thinks I look good, maybe it's the long wind-blown hair, or maybe my time at the gym hasn't been a complete waste after all." I nod back and mouth "hi." I'm still listening to my music, oblivious of all sounds around me.

I keep looking at her, occasionally making eye contact. At one point, she even waves, and I wave back a bit. My self-esteem has received a nice little boost; this young hottie thinks I'm good looking!

The bus rolls into the Bellevue Transit Center. I stand to get off, she stays. I wonder if maybe she'll try to slip me her digits or whatever the kids call it these days. I look at her one last time, and she's still smiling and waving - but looking at where I was sitting. I think, "hey, I'm right in front of you now!"

Then, I look behind me. And see the three-year-old kid in the seat next to mine that I missed because I was sitting sideways.

And the three-year-old kid is smiling and waving back at her.

Sigh.

DOS on my Box

I've been looking for a program that correctly emulates DOS on an XP to run all my old games. I believe I found that program in DOS Box.

Buffed

Two hardcore days at the gym. My arms are sore, I had a muscle twitch in my abs, and I don't feel any healthier. If anything, I feel fatter.

I hate this bullshit.

Sweet Irony

The election results in Iraq show that people voted for the parties most likely to take away their rights, including the right for women to vote.

My New Tax Proposal

After reading this article about how blue states like Washington pay far more into taxes than we get out of it (we get approximately 90 cents for every dollar we pay in, and New Jersey gets approximately 57 cents per dollar they pey) vs. red states that get upwards of two dollars for every dollar they pay in, I now propose a new tax plan: states get what they pay in, no more, no less. Washington can improve our national parks, give healthcare to our infant citizens, and do all of those nasty evil socialist commie pinko things that the red states profess to hate so much but will happily take our tax dollars to do.

And the red states?

As if I needed another reason not to live in one.

Fallout Wiki

One of my old buddies from the Fallout PnP days created a Fallout wiki over on Duck and Cover.

Love's Labour Found

Articles like this one about a library in a town with a population of 1 remind me of the power of a good book.

Light Reading

I've been on the search for something good to read lately, and I think I may have found it. A while ago, Seth loaned me a book called The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history where the black death wiped out 99% of Europe rather than 30%, so Islam and Buddhism grew to tbe the world's dominant religions, colonize the Americas, and so on. The premise sounded great; the execution, for lack of a better word, sucked. Kim Stanley Robinson (author of the Red Mars series) seemed far more interested in showing off his knowledge of Asian culture than in telling a good story.

Seth then loaned me The Philosophy of Horror, which is a fascinating nonfiction look at horror - why we read it or watch it, what the internal machinations are that attract us to it, and so on. It's not exactly light reading, so I've been going through it slowly. I'll read a few pages here and there, but it's not the kind of book I can spend an afternoon on.

A few days ago, Liz and I went to Barnes and Noble just to browse around. I needed to grab a copy of the Rider-Waite tarot deck for the game I've been working on, but otherwise had no goal. A book called House of Leaves sat on one of their "staff recommendation" shelves. "Best novel ever," some of the staff gushed. OK, I picked it up and looked through.

It looks like a combination of Nabokov's Pale Fire, a haunted-house horror story, and a meditation on the nature of films and movies. What's not to love? I bought it. I started reading it, and I love it. It's going to take me a while to finish, but since I'm leaving for a few days in the near-future, I'll have a nice long planeride all by my lonesome so I can get some good reading done.

Summing it Up

A Night At The Opera

Today Liz and I took in the Fifth Avenue Theater production of Singin' In The Rain. Aside from a couple of minor technical glitches (and hey, I can forgive that, it was their first performance), it was an amazing production. I'm familiar with the movie, of course, but this stage musical seems to be unique in that it was based on a movie, and not vice-versa. Therefore, all the worry of "will they get this part right?" is turned around, and instead you wonder how they could possibly do things like the "Make 'Em Laugh" sequence.

5th Avenue pulled it off in amazing fashion, wall-flips and all. I've gotta say, it was one of the best times I've had at the theater in a long time. Not that I go to live theater all that often, but damn this was a great show. My Seattle-based readers might want to check it out.

I Saw A Film Today, Oh Boy

The Perlinger Archive is an extensive collection of government-produced safety films (think Burt the Turtle and Duck and Cover). There's some unique and wacky stuff on there.

Quote of the Day

"Our assignment is to knock out the nuclear-weapons plant at Falafel Heights. The plant goes on line in 12 hours and is heavily defended. Now, if you have trouble hitting your objective, your secondary targets are here and here: an accordion factory and a mime school."

- Admiral Benson in Hot Shots!

One of Us!

Here's an interesting historical tidbit: in the early 1900s, a community of midgets called Lilliputia was created on Coney Island as a kind of permanent sideshow attraction.

TAKE OFF!

Hey! Take off you hoser!

Check the "Strange Brew Sounds" out.

Cheap Tools and DIY Resources

At Harbor Freight.

And DIY Net.

Playground Love

He's a husband seperated from his wife. She's a wife, seperated from her husband. They meet over the Internet, find out they have a lot in common. Romance blooms. They make plans to marry. They decide to meet.

They discover they are still married - to each other.

Once again, real life is better than fiction.

Quitter

I have a bad habit of quitting books. Some of them, I'll quit ten pages or so from the end. Others, if they lose me, I'll quit halfway through. Much to Liz's chagrin, I have quit Love in the Time of Cholera about five times.

Today, I officialy quit The Moon is a Harsh Misteress even though I haven't been reading it, I've been listening to the audio book as I work out. It started out strong but got damn boring. I'm going through some other audio books I've got lying around trying to find another suitable workout book.

Playing the Tarot

After watching Carnivale, I've been thinking a little bit about tarot card games and ways to use a tarot deck in role-playing games other than as a fortune-telling device.

In my research, I ran across this page, an interesting overview of games still played with tarot decks in Europe.

My Superbowl Review

Superbowl XXXIX: a great excuse to get together with friends, singe the hair off my hand with the grill and an out-of-control BBQ fire, have a good time, laugh at the same commercials (the AmeriQuest "Bad Kitty" commercial was the best, by consensus of laughter), and just relax.

Quiz Viz Roger

You scored as Punk and Pop Punk.. Punk and Pop Punk. Industrial 71% Punk and Pop Punk. 71% Hardcore 63% Classic Rock. 63% Emo & More 58% Ska 46% Indie Rock 42% Indie 42% Country 42% Mainstream 38% Britpop 38% Hip Hop and Rap 29% Music Recommendation created with QuizFarm.com

I like that I didn't score higher than 71% in any category - and that I scored just as high in Industrial as I did in Punk.

Local Cons

Yesterday I met up with a pretty big posse from the office and headed over to the Emerald City Comic Con, Seattle's comic show. It was surprisingly large, considering this is only their third year: I'd say there were easily two thousand people there on Saturday. They managed to get some pretty big-name artists, too, like Kurt Busiek and others (Mark Waid skipped out - just as well, I didn't even know he was planning on going). A good time was had by all, even if we covered the whole thing in about three hours.

Today is some big football game. I've got a handful of folks from the office (and Chad) coming over to watch in glorious 50" HDTV. And we're doing ribs and wings on the grill. I love that it's warm enough to grill such things on Superbowl Sunday.

Movie: The Rundown

I admit, I avoided The Rundown because I have a prewired dislike of professional wresting, but this is one of those instances where I'm happy to report I was wrong. It was everything an action movie should be: fun, campy, with good one-liners and plenty of fights. I don't have much else to say, but it was an excellent way to waste two hours.

Dream A Little Dream

It's been five years since I watched Requiem for a Dream, and only lately have I felt ready to watch it again. Last night, I was in such a funk that I figured it would be a perfect catharsis, and it was. Liz was as floored as I was the first time I saw it; for me, it had much less impact this time around, and I could take the opportunity to notice stylistic things I missed when I was so emotionally involved in the film. My problem with some of the "artistic crossover" that occurs in major Hollywood films (Gladiator being the most notable offender in my mind) is that they try to use techniques pioneered by people like Arranofsky in movies like Requiem, and they use those techniques arbitrarily or inconsistantly. Arranofsky did neither, and used non-traditional cinematography to visceraly enhance the movie. If you haven't seen Requiem for a Dream, I highly recommend it, but it is an intense trip. Be prepared.

Punch It Up

A random person commented on Liz's blog, and following the link back to the random person's blog revealed a very funny personal blog. Looking over my blog, you'd think I was a workaholic with time for nothing other than complaining about politics and watching movies.

I got to thinking about how I should make more posts about the funny things that happen in my life, and my wry observations regarding those things, when I realized that my life is actually pretty fucking boring, and I don't have a lot of wry observations to make on anything. And I got to thinking about that some more, and the more I thought about it, the deader I felt on the inside. And I started looking really hard, and I'm beginning to wonder where the life is at all right now.

Wolfgang posted a quote from Mark Twain on his blog a few days ago, something along the lines of: "twenty years from now, you'll regret the things you didn't do much more than you'll regret the things you did do." The problem is, aside from working at my job, going to the gym, and buying a house, I'm not doing a whole fuck of a lot. I've written a little, but it wasn't long ago that I was cranking out 10,000 words a month on my novel (sometimes more). I'm playing a lot of DnD (whoop-de-do), but so much of the stuff that is still important to me - traveling, experiencing cultures and people, and so on - I've back-burnered. I've thought before that I feel fuzzy and withdrawn, and I'm still trying to figure out if that's just how you live your life as a responsible adult, or if I'm missing out on something much wider than my life at the moment.

Gack. Just gack. It's been a while since I've felt this discontented, unmotivated, and generally depressed. Part of that may be tied into the fact that I feel like I've accomplished very little at work this week (which isn't really the case), but I've also got to ask myself why it is I would feel depressed over my job - which is just my job?

A New Game

So World's Largest Dungeon is out, Jon's homebrew world is in. I'm playing a female gnome sorceress, in a party made entirely of "little people." It's been great so far - I think losing the extra characters was a huge boon, and Jon knows a lot about his own world, or isn't afraid to make up what he doesn't know. I sense a fun game a-comin'.

Kitten Attack!

Remember Am I Hot Or Not? Same principle - for kittens.

An Optimistic View of the Election

Higher-than-expected voter turnout occured as voters defied terrorist threats against the polling stations. It's time to celebrate the triumph of Texas-style military policy!

The date?

September 3rd, 1967 - Vietnam.

Chronicle of Quotes on Iraq

Laid out in detail are various quotes about Iraq, including the plan to invade as early as September 17th, 2001; the money illegally rerouted from Afghanistan to plan the invasion; the assertions by Condi Rice not three months before 9/11 that Iraq had zero weapons of mass destruction (suddenly, the intelligence got all faulty after 9/11 and then returned to normal?); and in many instances a case for optimism after the election.

As good as the removal of Saddam is for the world and the Iraqi people, we should not forget that we were intentionally led to war on false pretenses (as any rational person looking at these quotes would agree) so that a few people could make a lot of money.

If Saddam was really so bad and getting rid of him was such a moral imperative, Daddy Bush should have done it in '91, and the conservative right should have supported Clinton's efforts to curb Slobodon Milosivic. That these two things did not happen shows the greedy, opportunistic hypocrites beneath their self-righteous exterior.

Inside the Evil Empire

An excellent article about the Christian underground in North Korea, and what might be the beginning of the end of Kim Jong Il.

Elves are Sexy!

For your reading consideration, a complete guide on mixing sex and DnD.

Somebody Set Up Us The Landmine

A PSA about landmines. Effective advertising.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

This last weekend, the Iraqi election turnouts were higher than expected, despite threats by insurgents that voters would be killed if they tried to vote.

With all the monumental fuckups in Iraq, it's only fair to say, with utmost sincerity, that the election is really damn cool. It doesn't change my feelings on the war, but I have to say that this is worth some of the sacrifice our soldiers have made, and it is a good thing.

What they do with this freedom - that's kind of what scares me a little.

But people often surprise you. We'll see.

Movie Shotgun: Predator and Alien Vs. Predator

Watched two movies yesterday: Predator and AVP. Predator was less cool than I remember it being as a twelve-year-old, but better then I expected it to be. AVP was actually much better than it was in the theater, for some reason. Maybe I'm just more forgiving of a movie as time passes. I certainly want to see Primer again, and considering my pretty harsh critique the first time around, I didn't think I'd say that.

Tonight, I'm in the mood for something dark. Really dark. I wonder if Liz is up for Requiem for a Dream.

World's Largest Audioblog

Oni-no-Anne (one-half of the cool gamer couple I mentioned a few days back) pointed out this great audioblog and review of the World's Largest Dungeon. I think I know what I'm going to be listening to at work the next few days.