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Second of Advent.
In a brief moment of morning confusion, the wife coined a good term for the
current generation of wordprocessor/computer system -- a
typerecorder. (It records the typing -- doesn't necessarily
do what you want with it, but it does record it...)
Regressing in this posting back to Thursday evening, I then went and saw
the movie End of Days. The reason was that the person I am teaching
Swedish to had decided to escape from the hotel he was staying at and see
it, so my being there would ensure that he at least actively spoke Swedish
before and after the film. (Unlike most other European countries, films not
specifically targeted for children are not dubbed into Swedish, only subtitled.)
Why this film? Well, as the man said, it's not a family kind of movie --
and we both had a curiosity about what the latest "Arnold film" was.
Well, if you've not seen it yet, rest easy, you really haven't missed much
of anything, except possibly a number of in themselves kinda neat actions
scenes. Here, the film ran at the big THX screen, which made those scenes
a bit more memorable than they would have been otherwise. And at one point,
in a very quiet scene set in a dank basement, I heard a typically pesky fly
buzzing by in the cinema, when I suddenly realized that it was part of the
soundtrack. (That's a high point? I hear you ask...)
Some critics have implied that the movie is so bad that it serves it's intended
evil purpose, namely to lull the public into a sense of complacency so that
the really evil stuff can happen without anyone reacting to it. Another asked
of Arnold's drunk ex-cop role, isn't Bruce Willis supposed to get this kind
of role? And there were many moment when watching Arnold's character, I kept
half-seeing "die-hard" Bruce instead. Weird... Anyway, apart from a few
atypically strong scenes in the midst of the mess, most of this movie is
quite forgettable. More so the more distance you get from the purely visual
effects -- it fades fast.
Hmm, perhaps one should go and rent a real devil's movie instead... say The
Devil's Advocate. Apropos apocalyptic films, I saw this nice quote:
There is a basic flaw in films that threaten to end all existence:
they very rarely do. Most directors are far too frightened to produce a movie
that ends by telling everyone in the audience that they are dead.
How true, yet films can in theory at least use such a threat -- be it
supernatural, technological, or asteroidial -- to good effect. This one most
emphatically did not.
Science news...
Australian scientists say they have discovered evidence of rapid change
in world sea levels and of a dramatic fall in geologically recent times --
directly challenging current conventional wisdom.
Specifically rise and fall of a meter or more in just a decade, leading to
a conclusion, hotly debated, that sea level has been unstable for some 130,000
years.
And as for the Mars polar lander, it appears likely now that it too is a
write-off.
* In my mailbox today:
:-) YOUR GREAT SITE NEEDS A COOL NAME!
(-:
Rename your site "www.yourname.xx.yy" !
This is much simpler and cheaper than "www.yourname.com". You don't need
to move your existing website.
There are FREE domains also!
(...)
One time e-mail from an authorized reseller
You don't need to be removed
Fascinating... If only a millicent type system existed for unsolicited
email, I could retire (messy workspace or no).
My plate is full, as usual, and tomorrow it's back to the teaching for another
three days. Thus next week will start off a bit lean on daynote updates.
Luckily the others in the daynote gang seem to be able to publish quite a
lot of interest these days.
I have several projects in a race condition, among them the book, although
Tom is fielding most of that just now, preparing chapters for the ongoing
Tech Review process.
Enough. All there is in the world if you like
it. -- tDD, Bierce
Returning to End of Days for a moment, the movie it should
have been would ideally have been based on for example the novel Black
Easter, by James
Blish. If you've not read this, do so sometime, preferably in the single
volume edition (published 1981 as JB intended it, not the earlier
publisher-hacked two volume set), which has both sections Black
Easter and The Day After Judgement.
Black Easter has a megalomaniac arms dealer enlisting the skills of an
over-ambitious black magician to bring about a "limited scale" Armageddon.
Of course, give the Devil an inch and... A classic tale of getting in over
your head. In fact, I think I am going to re-read it myself next week.
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Hi,
welcome to this week's journal. The update-link
(above) points to where I last added some text, which should simplify your
keeping up to speed. Of course, this assumes I remember to move it, and you
may still have to scroll back a bit and see if I've updated more than once
since you last visited, but that is easily done.
LeufNet
.
Open yours now!
