Thursday, June 30, 2005

Open Sesame!

I know I'm a geek; perhaps more of a Morlock, a boffin, a troll, but in that basic genera. How much so? It's hard to say, but this article was very exciting, which is probably a litmus test of some sort.

LILEKS (James) Screeeeeeedblog

You're damned skippy. And no, that isn't bomb-throwing; that's cutting like a surgeon. You barely feel the scalpel on the way in.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Monday, June 27, 2005

How I Spent My Weekend

So the girls went to spend the weekend with their grandmother. We were a bit apprehensive because this is the first time the baby's spent the night away, and the first time the eldest has spent the night farther away than across the street, and we didn't want them to get there and start crying they wanted to come home. Turns out I was overestimating my attraction; they didn't want to come home at all. Hmph.

In the meanwhile, Kathy and I took the opportunity to go see some films: "Batman Begins" and "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith". We saw "Batman" on Saturday after dropping the girls off, and "Star Wars Ep.3" on Sunday before picking them up.

First up: "Batman Begins". This was a fabulous film. People were fighting, ninjas were jumping down from the rafters, things blowed up real good like ... what's not to love? I understood why everybody did what they did. I liked watching them do it. Then more things blew up. Yay! Go see this one. I'll also be buying the DVD when it comes out.

Second up: "Star Wars: Ep.3". We walked out of the theater a bit let-down. It was visually striking, sure, but just walking out were were a bit ho-hum about it. And as time has passed, I am more and more disappointed by the film. Wasn't Padme once the Queen of Naboo? Wasn't she a Senator? When did she stop being a person who did things and instead turned herself into a weepy chyk who haunts her own living room crying? At what point did Mace Windu stop being concerned for the Jedi Way and turn into "The Punisher"? What the hell kind of narrative device was flying around mind-controlling those people without ever once being spotted?

And another thing: for most of the film, I actually felt bad for Skywalker. He was young, but because he was powerful an incredible amount of pressure was placed on him. People were lying to him (or telling him the truth, which might be worse) and using him for their own purposes, and I really felt bad for his situation. Then he went into the Jedi Temple, and I didn't care anymore. I completely disconnected, and that was that for emotional attachment. Obi-Wan should have taken his head. More to the story, though, what was his motivation for that? Even if he did all of everything he did out of loyalty to the Republic and/or to save Padme's life, when did he quit caring about that and decide that what he really wanted was to rule the Empire? The grue must have gotten to him as well.

Things sure did blow up good, though. I'm going to go out on a limb and opine that George Lucas should let other people write his scripts and he should stick to visual design.