Jules McWyrm

We're all Americans now

2008-11-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

Hey. I spend a great deal of my time trolling the internets and very little time contributing new content. In keeping with that tradition, let me direct your attention to this post at Whiskey Fire. It's short, but it is one of the more poignant meditations on the Bush administration I've read lately.

I'm not going to copy it here - click through and read it. However, I will tell you that it presents this video ...

... as the fitting culmination of a story that began with this ...

... and led to this:

A penis-free Iraq

2008-11-11T05:16:00.000-08:00

At some point I'll have to compile a nice colletion of George Bush clips. There've been some great moments. I really think my favorite was when he couldn't think of any mistakes he'd made during his first term. I loved that. Nothing like 30 seconds of dead air during a presidential press conference.

Anyway, here's one I apparently missed:

Warning signs ...

2008-11-04T08:16:00.001-08:00

See this beautiful collection of warning signs. Some favorites:

helter skelter

2008-10-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

Another (from the same guy?) - this one is an ad cut and aired during the Democratic primary.

rap sheet

2008-10-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

hmmm ... slow going here on River Road. Here are a couple of legal raps:

Debate summary

2008-09-29T07:29:00.001-07:00

Waffle bike

2008-08-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

Waffle Bike is a fully weaponized waffle making machine complete with call to prayer public address system.

The Politeness Formula

2008-08-21T15:27:00.000-07:00

... and other great diagrams.

Hey - I swear I'll start posting more often. Sorry for the lull.

Garden Yeti

2008-07-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

Ripped straight from BoingBoing, consider this beautiful garden sculpture:

Hand-painted resin, only $98.95

and finally ...

2008-07-16T11:09:00.001-07:00

Hmm - dresses colored with magic markers. And you can wash the color out and color it again ..

A missive...

2008-06-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

Whilst prowling the internets, it frequently occures to me to wonder what motivates a person, apparently normal in most respects, to concoct some of the rather astonishing features one frequently finds there.

Below I've reproduced in full a piece that I find to be utterly delightful. Better form would be to post a pithy excerpt and link but I fear that you, my dear readers, would fail to take the bait and explore this wonder in the detail that it deserves. So, from blog extraordinaire Sadly, No:

The Bad Boys,
One-a Dem Gummint Yards,
Trenchtown,KingstonJamaica

June 23, 2008

National Association of Police Organizations
317 South Patrick Street,
Alexandria,Virginia 22314
USA

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Some time has passed since your query first reached our desk, and we wish at once to reassure you as to the careful and detailed consideration it has undergone, through various internal committees and in a number of fact-finding initiatives. Indeed, your repeated and ongoing entreaties seem to imply a perceived lack of interest on our part, and we hope it is to your relief and satisfaction to learn that the dilatory nature of our response is due exclusively to the great care and attention with which we have considered it.

This brings us directly to the first item. Simply, sirs, and madams of law enforcement, the apparently ceaseless crescendo that your query has reached, its trumpeting repetition at all hours on cable and satellite television, has forced us not only to concur with your assertion that police naw give you no break, but further to suspect that not a soldier mon naw give you no break.

The effect on our well-being has been noticeable. We should like to reserve special mention for Sheriff John Brown, whose coming has been heralded with such spectacular fanfare that we feel a clawing unease as each new sunset finds him still on his dawdling way. Truly, sirs and madams, while once we found it troubling that not even we i-dren naw give us no break, it has lately begun to seem to us as though nobody naw give us no break!

Our second item is by way of explanation. As you say, the education system taught us at a young age to do unto others as we would have others do unto ourselves, such that the reasons for our unwise behavior might easily be unclear to a casual observer. Nonetheless, we have come to believe that it is necessary, in life, to give vent to the choleric passions (e.g., activities including robbin’, stobbin’, lootin’, and a-shootin’), and perhaps here is the nexus of our disagreement, for we remain unconvinced as to the utility of relaxation as a counterstrategy.

Thus we come to the answer toward which you have so zealously inquired. Our intention, since you ask, is to chuck it on that one, to chuck it on this one, to do likewise to various mothers and fathers, to similarly treat an array of brothers and sisters, to once again chuck it on that one, and then to chuck it on Mr. Calton Coffie, until 1995 the lead vocalist of the reggae ensemble, Inner Circle. Our intention as to Coffie’s replacement, Kris Bentley, is to chuck it on him.

We hope this clears things up and look forward to finally meeting Sheriff John Brown, should he not continue, as it seems, to be held up by other commitments.

Best Wishes,

The Bad Boys

P.S.: Yuh nuh know seh wi nuh give a damn if dem hate wi.

uncontacted

2008-06-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

This has been bumping around the internets for some time now, but I thought I'd throw it up here.

From BBC News:

In pictures: Brazil tribe
Members of one of Brazil's uncontacted indigenous tribes have been
photographed in a protected area of the Amazon jungle near Peru.

Click through the link above for more pictures.

Breaking news from AP

2008-06-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Get this:

Article:	AP NewsAlert
Copyright:	2008 Associated Press
Publication:	Associated Press

Excerpt for Web Use

License parts of this article for republishing on your website or intranet. Pricing based on the number of words excerpted.

Excerpts are priced by the word.

Well, how exciting!!

Lady of Spain...

2008-06-08T05:56:00.000-07:00

... I adore you.

Here's a whole bunch of 'em. They're all the rage at the Drone.

space opera in a pill

2008-06-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

Found this today. Made me happy.

Sorry for the no-posting that's been going on.

Movie Review: Corn

2008-05-21T06:04:00.000-07:00

Corn
Director: Dave Silver
Released: 2004

My Analysis: Not good at all.

This one is really pretty bad. Not unwatchable, though - it has pretty good acting (stars Jena Malone) and actually isn't half bad for a good stretch right there at the beginning. But it's all for naught - the film suffers an irreversible collapse about an hour in.

This film is eco-horror. I'm a little skeptical, but eco-horror has a long tradition. Godzilla was eco-horror. So was The Blob. Hell, you could argue that Poltergeist was eco-horror. There's a lot you can do with the genera. This film, though, doesn't actually do any of it.

The basic premise of the film is that genetically modified corn has gene swapped with a common weed which is then eaten by sheep. The sheep become violent - bity and aggressive. There's some potential there - we saw a preview for Black Sheep, and it looks pretty good. So the film could have run with the dangerous sheep thing. But it doesn't.

Apparently the director decided they could do better than scary angry carnivorous sheep with nasty sharp teeth. Even more scary, they must have thought, would be lambs that - if you ate them - might tend to increase the risk of certain birth defects.

I, personally, find the threat of a possibly tainted food supply slightly less immediate and visceral than the potential to be eaten alive by mutant sheep, but I'm prepared to play along. Unfortunately, what little tension might exists is undermined by the fact that the entire threat - the connection between the GM corn and the weed, the connection between the weed and the sheep behavior, and the connection between the sheep and the birth defects (all 3 cases) - is based entirely on the gut feelings of the main character.

Interwoven with this mostly incoherent and unconvincing eco-horror plot is a subtle but no less incoherent, unconvincing narrative about the main character's relationship with her step father. It's deeply weird. Up until the last 15 minutes of the film or so I thought there was going to be some surprise ending where we discover that the character's fixation on sheep and GM corn was a symptom of some sinister and mysterious condition caused by some awful repressed memory involving her dead mother. Or something.

So, no - don't watch this film. Not worth your time.

Btw - at some point I'll post things at aren't movie reviews. I swear.

The Grand Panjandrum

2008-05-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

Trolling about this afternoon I encountered the term panjandrum. Perplex, I took to googling. I encountered this wikipedia article, but it didn't sound quite right. On further investigation, I found this lovely block of text:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! No soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Fascinating, I say. Apparently (click through on the 2nd link) it was extemporaneously composed as a part of a memory challenge - it was supposed to be read once and then repeated verbatim. Unfortunately, the other party to the challenge found the text so idiotic he refused to repeat it.

Movie Review: The Hamiltons

2008-05-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

The Hamiltons
Director: Mitchell Altieri & Phil Flores
Released: 2006

My Analysis: Really fantastic.

This film is going to be difficult to talk about without spoiling it to some extent. I'd rather not spoil it, because it is one of the best horror films I've seen in quite some time. Certainly one of the best 5 or so I've watched in the last year. So - maybe you shouldn't read this. Maybe you should go watch the film.

The Hamiltons has a distinctly indie-film tone to it - very coming-of-age family movie. Maybe something like Little Miss Sunshine or something. This tone is jarringly incongruous since the opening credits play over a scene of a girl hog tied in a basement somewhere.

Francis Hamilton, the main character, is a troubled teenager. His parents died some time ago and he's been living with his older siblings ever since. They had to sell the family farm and they've moved six times in the last year.

The bit about moving six times in the last year is just sorta slipped in there. There's no explanation given, except that one of the brothers (Wendel) recently spent some time in jail for "biting some guy's ear off."

The coming-of-age tone is sustained throughout the film, but you quickly realize that something strange is going on. Wendel attacks a couple of road tripping young ladies and ties them up in the basement. Frances and then the oldest brother David both see this and don't react much at all. In fact, David seems pretty pleased about it.

Well, anyway - long story short. They're vampires. It isn't quite clear exactly how things went for them when their parents were around, but apparently their parents had a pretty fancy scheme for dealing with the whole vampire thing without having to constantly sneak out of town and go into hiding. Since their parents died the siblings haven't been able to keep it together. They wind up killing transients, random folks, and eventually people in their neighborhood. At some point they have to leave town, change their name, and relocate.

Frances is horrified by all this. He considers exposing his sibling to the police but can't quite bring himself to betray his family. Until, of course, the blood hunger whatsit come on him, as apparently is common with late teenage vampires. After his first feeding, he is at peace with himself and his family.

The effect is one of deep, deep alienation. Frances asserts that he and his siblings are sick, diseased. While he does come to terms with this, the cost is cutting himself (and his family) off from the rest of humanity. I'm real found of alienation films, and this one take the genre to a whole new level.

Movie Review: The Machinist

2008-05-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

The Machinist
Director: Brad Anderson
Release: 2004

My Analysis: A snappy thriller with a clever twist.

Hmm ... I don't want to get too bogged down in details here. There's this machinist, see - actually, it looks like he isn't a machinist so much as a blue collar guy with a job in manufacturing. Some sort of operator, I'd guess. I mean to say, it doesn't look like he works in a machine shop per se. Nor is he a mechanic. I can see why you'd think he was a machinist, but really ...

Right, that's exactly the kind of detail I'm trying to avoid. The guy's name is Trevor Reznick, and he isn't doing well at all. He's obscenely skinny. He's an insomniac. Apparently he used to go good-timing around with the fellas from work, but he doesn't go anymore. All of this started about a year ago ...

That's really all you need to know - something awful, clearly, happened to poor Trevor about a year ago and he hasn't had it all together since. Since he isn't aware of what, exactly, is causing his insomnia, etc we can assume he's blocking it out. From there, the film pretty much writes itself, with only a little help from our friend Mr. Freud.

Anyway, a pretty decent film. Not 'scary' really, but not bad either. If some one asks me "So, what worth-while films have you watched recently?", I might mention this one. Really.

Movie Review: Unrest

2008-05-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

Unrest
Director: Jason Todd Ipson
Released: 2007

My analysis: Not good at all.

A first year medical student has a profound reaction to the cadaver she is assigned to in Gross Anatomy. The exact nature of this reaction is never revealed - she doesn't have visions or enter an altered state of consciousness or experience physical symptoms. From the available evidence, it would seem that she's just really creeped out.

Anyway, she get really creeped out. She consults with some (unidentified) school official who encourages her to share her concerns about the creepy corpse with her anatomy professor, who justifiably laughs in her face. There is a string of murders. The anatomy professor cuts his own leg off with a reciprocating saw, and the med student heroically incinerates the scary cadaver.

The plot is generally incoherent. The tone of the movie has far too much in common with med school sitcoms like Grays Anatomy. The director seemed to imagine that his audience would be scared by the mere existence of anatomy classes.

An odd addition: through the film, the characters make clear that they imagine having ones body donated to science is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to anybody. All the cadavers that end up being dissected in anatomy classes belong to junkies, homeless people, missing persons, or folks who don't have any living family. Otherwise, they'd never have been donated. This belief isn't important to the plot, but it appears to be shared by every character with lines.

In short - not exactly unwatchable, but not at all pleasant.

TO DO: Duct tape wallet

2008-05-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

My wallet if falling apart. It's a fairly nice leather wallet that I got from Emily Tipton. It has a smiley face sticker on the inside flap - that's one of the things I've always liked about it.

It's fallen apart on me before. The seams have come loose, but I've been able to sew them back together with a sturdy needle and a spool of fishing line. Not this time, though - the leather is worn through. There'll be no sewing or stitching or patching. It's time for a new wallet.

So - duct tape wallet. It's time.

(oh yeah - hi, yifot. Log in, start a blog, and let me know about it.)