Category: Media

Please take a minute

I’ve only done four things on this list – five if you think of this blog as educational outreach – but when I read that Bev Odious has been getting her marching orders from the Canadian recording industry, my blood just boiled.

Anyway, if you want to stop the changes to the Canadian Copyright laws which are essentially going to criminalize everybody in Canada, please view this.

Smiling through the pain.

My right foot is almost entirely numb, even as my leg gets better.  And it wasn’t a charley horse; it was a torn muscle in my calf, as evidenced by a navy bruise the size of a tennis ball.  I’m walking much better, though…. I’ve been very slow and very gimpy.
Katie spent the night at Dax’ again. Rr.  Rrrr-rrrr.  Hrngh.

I constitute all the management that there is in my department today.  That’s a cheerful prospect before I go in; fortunately nothing nasty ever happens even when I blog in advance that it’s going to be fine.
Christine Lavin is at it again. I’ve seen her live, and she’s a truly remarkable entertainer.  This link by way of a bunch of Unitarian buddies, one of whom was dumped by a guy who…. well, let’s just say it’s lucky she didn’t spend years with him.  Six months was interesting enough.  Oh, Christine also did a version of it for men, so go to the main site and scroll about a third of the way down to get it.

Much better

I’m still a-limpin’ and a-gimpin’, but I think I’m mobile enough to go to work. I took a ton of calcium, as people told me that was the likely problem, and who knows if it helped, but I feel much better and I slept okay. I didn’t actually make it to the doctor, but if you know what the weather was like yesterday you won’t be too surprised. And besides, both of the kids were here yesterday and we actually had a very mellow day.

I made bean soup yesterday. That will allow me to more fully express myself today, what with the MSM and glucosamine and all. And don’t forget the beer.

Somebody’s doing a documentary about Harlan Ellison. That’s special. Want to see Harlan read a story?

The hands on the nuclear clock moved. China’s doing Star Wars stuff… The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is up in 2009 and what with all the threatening noises being made by Russia, Iran, North Korea and our neighbors to the south, it’s hard to feel like the future is a glorious place. (It’s even harder when you’re experiencing chronic pain, too.) I am reminded of the deathless lines from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”….

“For us, there will never be happiness!”

“We must learn to be happy without it.”

Ong Bak

I saw this at Jerome and Shannon’s:
Ong Bak.

This movie kicks serious, serious butt. I enjoyed about 95 percent of it and the parts I didn’t enjoy went by really fast.

My objections to what was a marvellous piece of badass entertainment are three:

Evil guy is in a wheelchair and has a laryngectomy. And SMOKES THROUGH THE HOLE. Ah, pure evil. What tripe, I wish they’d play to type for a change. Why pick on cripples? If it was a statistically balanced number of evil villains, I’d be a lot mellower, but so many cripped villains… sigh.

Tony Jaa is poetry in motion but when it comes to acting he’s reserved to the point of being like, well, like a solid object.

The script is the lamest ass excuse for a string of chase, fight and fight and chase scenes ever concocted in any human language, although there are two or three hilarious sight gags, including a great piece of graffitti in the middle of the market chase.

Shannon came home and said some very amusing things about her weekend. I think the funniest was, “I’m having a shower to get the smoke off” as she doesn’t smoke and the women she was hanging out with this weekend do. And I’m thinking, 13 days no smokes.

Paparazzi free zone

Until this morning, when I learned of the existence of Kate Middleton, I didn’t know where the term paparazzi came from. It came from the name of a photographer in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita who was in turn named after a school chum whose nickname was Paparazzo – “Mosquito”.

Kate Middleton is somebody or other’s girlfriend, and as far as I know, she doesn’t have a blog. She doesn’t have to, with half the scurvy press outside her door.

Continue reading Paparazzi free zone