Thoughts from a jumbled mind: February 2007

Yay for Craig Ferguson

Lately, I've been kinda bothered by the way the media, etc. is treating these messed up kids (Lindsey, Britney, etc.). I think that they're having such a hard time anyways and that the constant attention is making it so much more difficult for them to deal with their problems. Anyways, Craig Ferguson talks about it in a really personal way that's very brave, by talking about his struggles and announcing that he just celebrated 15 years of sobriety.

Memorable Phrases

"I'm going to give you a shot so that you don't remember the trauma I'm about to put you through." -- Doctor in Slough, England hospital just before he relocated my dislocated (and shattered) ankle.

"That's okay, I like spicy food." -- Me in an Indian restaurant on Third Avenue in NYC. (don't ever say this in an Indian restaurant, by the way. They take it like a challenge...and you'll lose.)

New Rules

I'm definitely a Bill Maher fan but he really topped himself with last week's New Rules. Click to watch below. It's all good, but I especially love his bit at the end about Hillary's chances of becoming President.

Cinema Paradiso

I was shocked and dismayed at my Oscar party to learn that none of my friends there had seen Cinema Paradiso. So, I figured I should spread the word, cause I just assumed everyone knew about this classic flick. It's an Italian film (yes, subtitled) that takes place in a small Italian village in the 1950s. It is a "coming of age" flick and it is about love, but it's not just about romantic love. It's about the people in your life and how they touch you. And it's about movies -- and how they touch you.

This is hands down my favorite movie of all time. This is a clip from YouTube. It's 4 1/2 minutes long - virtually no dialog. The music is gorgeous and the boy is stunning. It might appear a little melodramatic, but I am telling you - this movie is worth it. Go rent it or buy it or whatever, but I'm telling you, this will touch your heart. Every time I see a bit of it I feel compelled to go "awwww". Seriously.

Oscars '07

Contrary to several folks I talked to today, I thought the show was good last night. Ellen cracked me up - "those people are naked!" after being "behind the screen" with the Pilobus folks and giving a script to Scorsese... And I thought the Pilobus dancers were amazing. Their stuff was fast and really interesting.

Regarding the winners...I'm glad Scorsese finally won - they didn't really make it much of a surprise, now did they? I thought that Helen Mirren looked beautiful - just sophisticated and put together and elegant. Perfect for Oscar. Unlike Meryl Streep, who I adore! She's so talented and she's funny and seems to be down to earth...but what was with the whole earth-mother vibe she was working?

I don't think that Jennifer Hudson was the best supporting Actress of the year, but I think she had the best back-story, what with the whole American Idol thing and Simon being mean to her and all...and I think they fell for it.

I'm glad Eddie Murphy didn't win. I didn't think he deserved it. He's a disturbing man. He did a good job in a decent movie. Not Oscar material in my book.

Forrest Whittaker was great cause he was all unhinged. I like that.

Of course, I lost the Oscar pool at my party. I always do, which I think is best, cause it would be weird to have people come over and then take their money. Jenna won for the second time in a row. Next year, I'm watching her more closely...

I still have the following pix to see: The Good German, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, Notes on a Scandal...gotta snap to!

This American Life

This American Life is this grrrr-eat radio show on NPR done by a guy named Ira Glass. Basically, he picks a subject and then interviews people - they end up telling their story. It's little vignettes and they're always sorta quirky and interesting. You can now download them as free podcasts. I always grab them to listen to when I'm traveling. I get bored listening to music all the time and this actually distracts me more because I'm involved in the stories.

Anyways, if you have Showtime, they're going to be doing the tv version of This American Life and all the previews look and sound really good. Click below o see the (excellent) trailer and set your TiVo to record...

(Edited 2/24 cause the link for the trailer was broken...)

Musings....

I was talking to my friend Rosie the other day and she was talking about going to see some Paul Weller shows recently. At one of the shows, they bumped into a friend who was shooting photos for Spin magazine who invited them to the afterparty, so they went and wandered around and hung out with the celebs n stuff.

I used to have a life where I had things like that happen to me. I used to end up at weird, interesting events with weird people and celebrities 'n stuff. Somehow, Seattle (and even worse...the suburbs...the NEW JERSEY of Seattle, where I live), don't seem to offer these same opportunities. (okay, okay, okay...there are weird people here. But they're not nearly as interesting as NYC weirdos, who really seem to revel in their oddness.)

It's much more difficult to come up with fun interesting stories these days. Los Angeles and New York City offered me very different (I'm trying not to say "better") experiences when it came to excitement and fun. I mean, working with the geeks has been really great for me and I'm happy and it's beautiful here and everything, but I used to have an exciting life. I don't feel like that's even possible here.

Attitude...it's all about the attitude, right? Perspective, etc. etc. etc... Not quite there yet. Sigh.

Running Windows Vista

I got an email at work yesterday chastising me for not upgrading any of my work machines to Vista, so I backed up and installed it on my Dell desktop machine. Overall, it's been fine. It's certainly pretty and shiny, which works for me.

It's got this setting on by default (that the Mac ads are making fun of) that prompts you 92 times when you are installing software to make sure you really want to do that. I understand why it's there - so that civilians don't allow various websites to install malware on their machines, which is a huge problem.

Of course, I'm no civilian and I irritate easily at this sort of thing, so I've disabled it, which of course means that I am now more vulnerable to something auto-installing itself via a website. I wonder though -- which is more helpful? Regular users aren't installing software often, so it may not happen that frequently - and when they do get the prompt, theoretically, it will make them think twice. Or, do civilians just get annoyed and confused by Windows talk and just click to make the messages go away?

To me, it wasn't just the prompting. Windows Defender is installed by default, which is handy and I use it to control what loads at startup rather than modifying the registry cause it's neater and easier to undo. But with that setting, I wasn't authorized to modify these settings via Windows Defender - but I had no issues when I modified the registry manually. Now, I happen to generally know what I'm doing around computers, but this seems sorta odd if it's meant to be a security feature - maybe it's not, but then I don't know what they're trying to achieve.

So far, all my software has installed ok. Running Firefox, Media Monkey (great free add-in for playing music - uses much less memory than iTunes or WinMedia), Lotus Notes, FolderShare, Audible, Skype, 1000+ Microsoft apps, etc. It's pretty snappy loading up which is good. Of course, I still want to just press a button and have my computer turn on immediately, but we're definitely not there yet.

I'm not taking my laptop up to Vista yet, although it will upgrade fine (hardware wise). Laptops are way trickier and quite frankly, if I'm traveling and have a weird problem, it's much more difficult to resolve. I'll keep you updated on my adventures in Vista-land.

Voyeurism

Just in case you have a little bit of the voyeurism bug (personally, I think everyone does...), check out FlickrSpy. It's a website that streams pictures as they are being uploaded to Flickr. I find it fascinating.

Hey, were you thinking I was talking about pornographic voyeurism? Dirty minds...

Just in case you're one of those people who think John McCain is "moderate"

“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

He's gone over to crazy right wing land...

From MSNBC.

Another lazy weekend

Gorgeous Saturday. It's been so long since we had a sunny day in the 60's... went to the dog park along with 9700 other dog lovers and their dogs. Gus, who hates water, LOVES mud. Suffice it to say he quickly became a brown dog rather than a white one. But he was a brown dog running around with his tail high and his ears sticking straight up cause he was so happy. It's hard to be mad at that...

Then I went home and laid in my hammock for a while. It's in my backyard hanging between two HUGE (100+ feet high) cedar trees, so when you look up, you just see all the foliage. It's really pretty and smells awfully nice as well. I worked at staying there and attempting to relax for a while before I decided I needed to get all the pine needles off of my roof, so for the second time, I dragged my ladder over, climbed to the top of it and got too scared to climb onto the roof. I'm going to ask a friend to sweep off the roof for me. I was having visions on lying on the deck passed out, Gus snuggling up to me and no one knowing I was there. I figured...not such a a great idea. Did some misc. cleanup in the yard, went for a bike ride and just enjoyed having a nice pretty day.

Today I did the usual - build a fire, read the papers, gab long distance for a while and then I went to the Seattle Home Show. There are a lot of people out there hawking hot tubs. I just want the skeevy 1970's era hot tub at my house to go away. Every time I look at it, I hear 70's porno music in the background and I get all sorts of disturbed. Yuck. The show was interesting and I collected cards and bought a new picture thingy for my den, so it was a nice day. Stopped on the way home at a restaurant an LA friend recommended before I moved up here and had the best lasagne. I was shocked - really really good Italian food (at least really really good lasagne) on the West Coast! I was so happy, I timed it to see how long it would take me to get there from my house and it's less than 15 minutes! (Of course, that's only true on the weekends when there's no traffic on the bridge between my house and Seattle, but okay, that's still workable). I'm dragging my friends there next week or having them cater my Oscar party or something.

That's about all. My aunt is in the hospital and she's really sick, so send happy thoughts to Florida. I know it's Florida, which makes it difficult, but she's a very fun and amusing person so do your best to work through the whole icky Florida prejudice and send those positive thoughts down south.

Oh yeah, and let me just say that I LOVED Lost and Grey's Anatomy this week. Two seriously kick-ass episodes. If you're not TiVo-ing Lost and going through it in slow motion, you're missing a lot. Nuff said.

And don't forget about the Oscars next Sunday. If Beyonce's there, please remember to laugh at her outfit. Thank you for listening.

Rush & Ann

A clip from Fox News' "Half Hour News Hour". There's no way those are real people laughing cause this stuff just ain't funny - on either side of the political divide.

Republicans aren't funny

Fox News has recently launched their answer to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Judge for yourself, but personally, I just don't think the kids are gonna flock to this...

Just in case you're wondering...

Anna Nicole. Still dead.

It's not just me...

...Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace disavowed this claim. He told reporters he has no evidence of any links between the explosives killing Americans and top Iranian officials:

We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically], knows about this,” he said. “It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it’s clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit.

From ThinkProgress.

I don't believe them

Yesterday, all the talking heads shows were abuzz about the government announcing that Iran is arming militant groups in Iraq. They aren't being subtle any more - they are laying out their groundwork to attack Iran. This is wrong for so many reasons...first of all, I just don't believe them. This all feels very much like "weapons of mass destruction" territory to me. I'm not saying Iran is totally innocent either - they want Iraq to become a Shiite country like Iran. Iraq was not a religious country under Hussein. He was a horrible man, but from what I read, during his reign, people considered themselves Iraqis first. Now, they consider themselves Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds first and are willing to kill each other because they aren't the right kind of Muslim.

And the militant Muslims believe and teach that the U.S. is at war with Islam, not Iraq. By invading a second Muslim middle eastern country, we lend credence to their claim. That in itself is not enough reason not to invade, but should be considered carefully, because if we lend them credence, it's easier for them to recruit youngsters (and adults) to become militant. (And by militant, I mean, terrorist - folks who will kill civilians to make their point.) And the more people who they recruit who are willing to take out civilians (or, quite frankly, any American), the scarier the situation becomes for all Americans.

Plus, our military is totally stretched to the max. We've been pulling guys out of Afghanistan because Iraq is such a nightmare, so the Taliban (remember them? They're the guys who trained the folks who did 9/11.) are resurging in Afghanistan. We're so focused on Iraq now that we are close to blowing our initial goal - to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. I feel terrible for our military. I know that many of them believe in what they're doing and they should. They're being asked to put their lives on the line. I think they're being used and misled by our government.

It's a terrible situation. No easy answers, that's for sure. I hope that at least one of the 10,000 senators announcing their intention to be the next President comes up with something that's going to help Iraq calm down (though I this is a delusional wish on my part), stabilize Afghanistan and change the perception of the U.S. around the world. It's not just Muslims who think we're out of control...

And now for something completely different

Roosters rule, apparently.

Anyone else?

Also from Yahoo:

The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father.

The claim by Prince Frederick von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit
over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate
lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith
boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the
father.

This could turn into quite the drinking game. Name the next person who's going to claim they're the kid's daddy. Hmmm....I'm going to say Kevin Federline. You?

Be glad you don't live in upstate New York

(unless of course you do...) From Yahoo:

New York's governor declared a disaster in Oswego County, where five straight days of lake-effect squalls have dumped nearly 100 inches of snow, and even more snow was forecast through the weekend.

"You know, it was neat when it started because we hadn't gotten any
snow in December or January," Bateman added. "It's getting old now."

Old Windows commercial or something

Too long to be a commercial, but it's a trip. Stick with it - it really gets trippy around 4:00. Let's just say it combines references to OS2, Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 386. Oh yeah, and genuine 1980's rapping.

Warning Will Robinson

Celine Dion is not just performing at the Oscars -- she's debuting a new song. Although, I couldn't tell you a new Celine Dion song from an old recycled one, I can tell you this -- she bugs the crap out of me!

And the Oscars are long enough without her! It's bad enough we have to sit through all the nominated songs. Now we have to pour hot wax into our ears to avoid being tainted by her vocal stylings.

Sigh.

Thoughts From a Jumbled Mind

A palate cleanser of a blog.