More greed

...and shameless self-promotion from yours truly. I know you were all wondering how I'm going to sell out next, and here it is: The Fleabagger Portfolio. Just tune in every month to see which stocks you should be buying and why, and at the end of the year, we'll all sit down together, review, and have a nice, uproarious laugh.

My real blog

...is here. My recent posts on this blog have been, and for most of the foreseeable future my new posts will continue to be, entirely within your unsound mind. If that link does not work, it is your fault. You have not progressed far enough in your mental convalescence.

Backlog Bob

America

...to spammer at bankoffamerica: "You bank off!"

Backlog Bob

Random thinking

I like opening my laptop all the way, and closing it slowly, so as to see what my background image looks like from every angle. (That's not as weird as it sounds to those who've never done that with a laptop screen.) At about 150 degrees (the angle, not the temperature), it looks really dark, and you can't make the colors out. It's kind of like a photo negative, but it's not. (If you've had a cell phone camera since the age of eight, ask your parents what a photo negative is.) As the angle lessens, different things and different colors come into view, and different things stand out more. At about 110 degrees, the picture looks lighter than normal. At about 90 degrees, the picture looks normal; the picture gets briefly lighter again, but as the angle approaches 0 degrees, it gets darker and darker again, like it was at 150 degrees, only with different things in the picture standing out. Finally, the picture goes off completely as I shut the laptop, and it goes to sleep.

The picture on my background is a cartoon character: the title character of the Miyazaki movie Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. In the background (of my background... heh), there are unrealistically huge, flying insects that resemble centipedes with the jaws of a stag beetle and the wings of a dragonfly. Nausicaa, meanwhile, is sitting in the foreground, looking calm and contemplative. As I think about it, the reason I like this cartoon character so much goes a lot deeper than simply that I like the movie she's in. (It's probably more that I like the movie so much because it has such a wonderful character in it, though there are other things to like about it as well.) She's indomitably brave and steady in the face of danger, and very intelligent and wise, even though she's young. She has a really cool rocket-assisted glider that she can fly like a hawk (or like an eagle, if you're a Steve Miller fan) - she intuitively knows the wind and flies gracefully, not forcefully. But, she also has a gun, a sword, and some flash grenades. (Hoo hah!) Best of all, Nausicaa is extraordinarily kind, and she works to make peace between warring peoples, even those who did horrible things to her and her people, and those who are about to. But in the end, she can't make peace with evil people (no one can), so she kicks butt. Okay, not really, but that's how I would have written it. I suppose it's probably better that it was written by Miyazaki instead.

I want a woman who's brave, intelligent, kind, talented, forgiving, strong, and well-armed (oh, and beautiful). But I guess I should cut back on my Miyazaki intake, and start focusing more on the real world, where such women don't exist. . . or do they?

Backlog Bob

Defenseless

. . .in Ohio.

"Sunshine" update

Hi there. Here is more information about being exposed to outer space, as in the movie Sunshine.

Backlog Bob

Noisy Little Sunbeams

I just watched Sunshine and wow, outer space sure is loud. Especially the sunlight.

But that was just the third or fourth biggest complaint I have about the movie. The biggest thing is that it was mainly a less-scary version of Event Horizon. Is it a sci-fi movie or a horror movie?

Well, it was derivative whichever it was. Should we have an homage to Silent Running or to Nightmare on Elm Street? (Or was it Solaris vs The Ring?)

Not much happened for about the first 20 minutes, and when klaxons do sound, we see people running, spliced in with. . . different people running. And then they fix the problem by suiting up and going for a space walk. Real astronauts going on a space walk was historic. Actors doing a space walk "in a Hollywood basement" is boring. Do we really want to try boring the audience for over half an hour?

Furthermore, the silly premise of the sun having aged countless millennia while technology remained relatively stagnant from the early 21st century. (It looked like Cilian Murphy was cruising around the ship on an unpowered scooter.) If we want audiences to face the prospect of a dying sun (help me out here, but something like the 3,000th century, right?) with mid-21st century technology, how do we explain the dearth of scientific achievement between now and then?

And of course, the nonsensical sound effects: is there sound in outer space? Even if there is, why is sunlight loud out there, and silent here on earth?

--Spoiler Alert--


During a crisis, the crew faces the threat of an oxygen shortage, and the oxygen farm babe suggests killing three of the remaining seven crew members. She gets two others, the mission-focused meanie and --guess who-- the bleeding-heart liberal babe who cried when the captain died! Had they even met? Why wouldn't she mention this plan to mission-minded Cilian Murphy, or the 1st officer later revealed to be self-serving and afraid to die (who was in charge at the time and could've ordered them to carry out her plan), or even the vaguely Middle Eastern-looking psychiatrist?


--Spoiler Over--

And the female lead reminds me of Katie Holmes Cruise (probably because she shares so much screen time with Cilian Murphy). Is that girl cute, or does she just grow on you after months in relative isolation?

Just kidding about that last one. But the first few questions were ones the producers and directors should have asked themselves before or during the making of Sunshine. It would have been fun to MiSTify, but I'm beginning to think that about every movie. 2 of 5 dying suns. (Okay, sorry about that awful pun.)

Backlog Bob

--Update--
Comments on this post also contain spoilers. I mean real spoilers, not this baby-bottle stuff.

--Spoiler Alert--

P.S. Would a man's face really freeze and not explode in outer space? I remember being told that it would explode from the imbalance of pressure before it would freeze solid. Haven't the Russians done experiments to find this out?