Whilst perusing the King James version of the bible, I found this passage in Philemon, Book 57, chapter 1, verse 57 "Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord."
This whole chapter is really focused on the bowels. I guess it is some kind of funky translation..but when world events are supposedly guided by this "holy writ", it is a shame more attention isn't paid to enemas, or whatever the hell kind of ass fetish this verse is rejoicing.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Friday, October 29, 2004
EA SPORTS - It's In The Game...sometimes
Last night I rented and played FIFA 2005 for the PS2. If anyone is planning on doing the same, don't. This title is broken.
It has probably the most dizzying animation I have ever seen in a sports title. The players are incapable of changing direction without making a little swirling motion that induces vertigo and reminds me irresistibly of a wooden spoon twirling slowly in a nearly congealed bowl of dough.
I will put some more time into this game before returning it but already I am struck by a clunky and dated menu system, choppy and disjointed play by play and frame rate drops (EA Sports Achilles heel). Licensed players and teams and a bopping soundtrack can only do so much.
To confirm my findings, I played Winning Eleven 7 immediately afterwards to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating and the difference was stunning. The players can stop and change direction on a dime. When doing so they look exactly like someone performing touch and go sprints with all of the appropriate body lean and inertia.
It must be noted that EA Sports Flagship title Madden is a sight to behold with untouchable production value and solid game play. The Tony Bruno Radio Show in Madden 05 is particularly impressive. Beyond Madden however is a mixed bag of compromises and disappointments.
EA is a strange company. Their flagship titles are phenomenal but they still churn out crippled and buggy games with little to no improvement year after year. Their success proves, sadly, that this ugly business model works and works well.
I urge all fellow video game enthusiasts to buy, not rent, Winning Eleven 7. It lacks the complete licensing of FIFA from EA, but it contains within it's silver backed disc perhaps the greatest achievement in sports game programming. Be warned, gentle reader, that the price of entry to this gem of a title is high. WE7 utilizes a menu system that is complex and daunting. The control system is unlike any other conventional North American sports title with a counter intuitive scheme that utilizes every button, trigger, stick and combination on the Dual Shock controller.
The Master League (franchise) mode is particularly daunting. The accompanying on-screen instructions read like a high end home theatre system manual that has been translated three times over.
All of this complexity, however, merely adds to the depth of a title that could, quite literally, be the only video game that you would ever need.
note: Winning Eleven 8 should arrive in North America Q1 2005.
It has probably the most dizzying animation I have ever seen in a sports title. The players are incapable of changing direction without making a little swirling motion that induces vertigo and reminds me irresistibly of a wooden spoon twirling slowly in a nearly congealed bowl of dough.
I will put some more time into this game before returning it but already I am struck by a clunky and dated menu system, choppy and disjointed play by play and frame rate drops (EA Sports Achilles heel). Licensed players and teams and a bopping soundtrack can only do so much.
To confirm my findings, I played Winning Eleven 7 immediately afterwards to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating and the difference was stunning. The players can stop and change direction on a dime. When doing so they look exactly like someone performing touch and go sprints with all of the appropriate body lean and inertia.
It must be noted that EA Sports Flagship title Madden is a sight to behold with untouchable production value and solid game play. The Tony Bruno Radio Show in Madden 05 is particularly impressive. Beyond Madden however is a mixed bag of compromises and disappointments.
EA is a strange company. Their flagship titles are phenomenal but they still churn out crippled and buggy games with little to no improvement year after year. Their success proves, sadly, that this ugly business model works and works well.
I urge all fellow video game enthusiasts to buy, not rent, Winning Eleven 7. It lacks the complete licensing of FIFA from EA, but it contains within it's silver backed disc perhaps the greatest achievement in sports game programming. Be warned, gentle reader, that the price of entry to this gem of a title is high. WE7 utilizes a menu system that is complex and daunting. The control system is unlike any other conventional North American sports title with a counter intuitive scheme that utilizes every button, trigger, stick and combination on the Dual Shock controller.
The Master League (franchise) mode is particularly daunting. The accompanying on-screen instructions read like a high end home theatre system manual that has been translated three times over.
All of this complexity, however, merely adds to the depth of a title that could, quite literally, be the only video game that you would ever need.
note: Winning Eleven 8 should arrive in North America Q1 2005.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Wired 12.08: The Lost Boys
Here is an interesting article from Wired echoing the ideas of a recent post in our beloved Jim Dandy Blog. R.I.P.T.V. (I think that THEY are watching us.)
Wired 12.08: The Lost Boys
PSP: The PSP FAQ
Here is an extensive article from IGN with all of the PSP details. Is anyone interested in this thing? Personally, I think I will stick with my Pocket PC and my GBA.
PSP: The PSP FAQ
PSP: The PSP FAQ
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Eminem's Mosh video
GNN_Mosh_bb2.mov (video/quicktime Object)
I am not an Eminem fan, but I will give this video credit for being innovative. Good use of animation and live action. A cool graphic style.
Besides that, I wonder if this aggressive indictment of Bush will be played on MTV? No, I don't think so either.
I am not an Eminem fan, but I will give this video credit for being innovative. Good use of animation and live action. A cool graphic style.
Besides that, I wonder if this aggressive indictment of Bush will be played on MTV? No, I don't think so either.
Ultimate Canadian Music Website
There is not much to say other than the background tunes while browsing the Loverboy biography are outstanding.
http://www.canadianbands.com/home.html
http://www.canadianbands.com/home.html
Monday, October 25, 2004
A Day Too Many: Review of the THE DAY AFTER (Duh duh duh duhn) TOMORROW
Recently I had posted some thoughts on the Chick Flick "Raising Helen" and my inability to suspend my disbelief in the spirit of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls just want to have funununun". My loving spouse "Whahey" who happened to have enjoyed the movie in question was irritated with my review and thought that for someone who hadn't even watched the film, I was a little too strong in my views on it. I don't actually believe "Whahey" liked the movie but ever since she liked Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, playing much the same character that she plays in Raising Helen... and "How to Lose a Guy in Whatever Amount of Time", Whahey likes Kate Hudson in any movie. In any event, I convinced Whahey that she needed to let a Man's Man, Me, pick a manly guy movie for our next selection. In act of deference that would make any Mormon Husband happy, Whahey agreed to let me select the next film and I picked "The Day After Tomorrow", the schocking might possibly come true movie scenario about really abrupt climate change.
Essentially in this movie, Dennis Quaid plays a climate scientist, a paleoclimatogolist actually, who predicts that within a century, melting polar ice will cool the ocean currents which would cause another ice age unless world leaders ratify the Kyoto accord to slow down the ice melt. At the conference where he makes the prediction, he meets the guy who played Bilbo in the Lord of the Rings and being a wise Hobbit, Bilbo strikes a good clean scientific relationship with Dennis QUaid's character which is a good thing since it turns out that Quaid's theory was right but it comes true within hours of returning home to Washington DC from the conference where he predicted the climate shift. Bilbo phones him in the middle of the night to let him know what is up.
One of the curious things about this movie is that it has the classic hollywood Democrat analysis of the world. So world leaders, okay the US vice-President who pooh poohs the danger of climate change is portrayed as the bad guy for failing to address a change forecast for a century out. My question is what did the screenwriter think that a Vice President can do in terms of ratifying Kyoto to cut emissions to avoid abrupt climate change within one week? I digress...
This movie has lots of things blowing up, lots of people dying grisly deaths, even a hungry pack of CG wolves out to eat the protaganists, but disappointingly, nobody naked. Even the hypothermia scene that promised the legitimate reason for lead characters to strip down has the fully clothed hugging to warm up solution.
Did the movie do a good job portraying realistic scenarios? Whahey described the climbing type scenes in the movie as "Striving for the realism of Vertical Limit but achieving the absurdity of cliffhanger". For example, in the opening of the movie Dennis Quaid and his two science pals are on the antarctic ice cap (whatever that is) drilling cores of ice to find evidence of ancient climate change. While they are drilling, a huge crack, miles deep, forms right where they are drilling. When Dennis's ice cores are stranded on the far side, he does the vertical limit leap to the other side and grabs the three metal contained ice cores. The fissure gets bigger and he leaps, he lands on his feet, he hands the ice cores to his co-worker and he balances on the edge of the ice cliff with nothing in his hands or on his person. The ice collapses and he disappears from view. We next see him dangling from a single Charlet Moser ice axe. This is kind of a Johnny Rambo guns in the swamp thing combined with INspector Gadget. Whahey's reaction was a female climber's reaction to the scene, saying "As if!". I merely commented about what a "Bomber" piece of equipment the ice axe appeared to be and how quickly it could be retrieved, presumably, from inside a parka.
Later in the movie, another mountaineering scenario arose where three guys travel in -150 fahrenheit across the barrens of New Jersey in a glacier travel style. They are roped together roughly 15 feet apart when one of them fall through the glass ceiling of a mall that they were walking over. Dennis Quaid once again retrieves his Moser axe and arrests the fall of the three of them and their sleds by digging his ice axe into glass which then cracks closer to the hole necessitating the "Knife Belay". Again, Whahey could only come up with "As if".
There are many curious inconsistencies in the movie and implausibilities, so as I know that the reader can get impatient, here are some highlights:
1) several teenagers are trapped in New York, flooded and frozen as temperatures fall to -150 f. So long as they stay indoors and dress like street people and burn books in a fire place, they stay alive for the three days until the storm passes and temperatures return to Saskatchewan like levels. Bilbo, a phd scientist and his two phd sidekicks, are in a remote scottish research station when the bad weather hits them. They are in a lab full of wood furniture, paper and other combustibles, yet the screenwriter has them die because their generator runs out of fuel. Why didn't they just light a fire like everyone else who survives?
2) Americans survive the abrupt climate change by moving to Mexico. The screenwriter has this scenario entail the US foregiving all third world debts in return for taking in climate refugee americans. We are supposed to believe that Americans will live happily ever after in their new homes and their now debt free southern hemispheres bestest pals. At this point, even I was saying "As if". Why are third world countries poor? Mostly because they have limited resources for their populations, very little productive capital for the population and low productivity as a result. Taking in Americans whose financial wealth is gone would only make things worse. Consider that most AMericans live in the northern states which in the movies are buried and destroyed by snow and ice. Consider that most Americans have most of their wealth held as real estate/property which is now worthless as it is buried under snow and ice. They have no wealth. They are bust. They also have no jobs since their economy "got blowed up". If you want to argue that the US government can just print money to pay for what AMericans need, think again. The US currency value is ultimately backed by the production/income of the US economy which in this movie is gone.
3) the portrayal of science and scientists is really strange in this movie. My understanding is that it can take years to analyse things like ice cores but in this movie, Quaid's character has his total data ready to go in hours. QUaid's character also works with mathematical models of climate that use so much data and are so complex that they require all of the federal government's mainframe computing power, yet once running the model provides estimates within minutes right down to the house address where the next nasty weather event will occur. So much for chaos theory and the unpredictability of weather. SImilarly, Bilbo lacks the computing power to analyse his masses of data, but he can email the masses of data to Quaid instantly. Man, I want to sign up with that internet service provider. I guess Dennis doesn't have the old 10MB limit on his inbox.
4) Don't get me started on the Antarctic survival suits that have the fur around the hood and I am guessing, the finest "fill that is not down" for insulation. Hoser style snowmobile suits look like the inspiration for these outfits. Also, in -150 f, people die instantly but with these suits on, the characters are so warm that they can have the skin on their faces exposed and even take their mitts off to fix some gear.
So really, what can one say in a positive way about a movie that was intended to educate the movie going masses about the dangers of climate change? First, it would be an excellent candidate for MST 3000. Second, it really is someone ripping off the scenarios of an earlier scary story, THe Stand by Stephen King but in that one, instead of climate change, it is a bad flu that does in New York. When should rent this film? Probably even the day after the day after the next day after the day after tomorrow.
Essentially in this movie, Dennis Quaid plays a climate scientist, a paleoclimatogolist actually, who predicts that within a century, melting polar ice will cool the ocean currents which would cause another ice age unless world leaders ratify the Kyoto accord to slow down the ice melt. At the conference where he makes the prediction, he meets the guy who played Bilbo in the Lord of the Rings and being a wise Hobbit, Bilbo strikes a good clean scientific relationship with Dennis QUaid's character which is a good thing since it turns out that Quaid's theory was right but it comes true within hours of returning home to Washington DC from the conference where he predicted the climate shift. Bilbo phones him in the middle of the night to let him know what is up.
One of the curious things about this movie is that it has the classic hollywood Democrat analysis of the world. So world leaders, okay the US vice-President who pooh poohs the danger of climate change is portrayed as the bad guy for failing to address a change forecast for a century out. My question is what did the screenwriter think that a Vice President can do in terms of ratifying Kyoto to cut emissions to avoid abrupt climate change within one week? I digress...
This movie has lots of things blowing up, lots of people dying grisly deaths, even a hungry pack of CG wolves out to eat the protaganists, but disappointingly, nobody naked. Even the hypothermia scene that promised the legitimate reason for lead characters to strip down has the fully clothed hugging to warm up solution.
Did the movie do a good job portraying realistic scenarios? Whahey described the climbing type scenes in the movie as "Striving for the realism of Vertical Limit but achieving the absurdity of cliffhanger". For example, in the opening of the movie Dennis Quaid and his two science pals are on the antarctic ice cap (whatever that is) drilling cores of ice to find evidence of ancient climate change. While they are drilling, a huge crack, miles deep, forms right where they are drilling. When Dennis's ice cores are stranded on the far side, he does the vertical limit leap to the other side and grabs the three metal contained ice cores. The fissure gets bigger and he leaps, he lands on his feet, he hands the ice cores to his co-worker and he balances on the edge of the ice cliff with nothing in his hands or on his person. The ice collapses and he disappears from view. We next see him dangling from a single Charlet Moser ice axe. This is kind of a Johnny Rambo guns in the swamp thing combined with INspector Gadget. Whahey's reaction was a female climber's reaction to the scene, saying "As if!". I merely commented about what a "Bomber" piece of equipment the ice axe appeared to be and how quickly it could be retrieved, presumably, from inside a parka.
Later in the movie, another mountaineering scenario arose where three guys travel in -150 fahrenheit across the barrens of New Jersey in a glacier travel style. They are roped together roughly 15 feet apart when one of them fall through the glass ceiling of a mall that they were walking over. Dennis Quaid once again retrieves his Moser axe and arrests the fall of the three of them and their sleds by digging his ice axe into glass which then cracks closer to the hole necessitating the "Knife Belay". Again, Whahey could only come up with "As if".
There are many curious inconsistencies in the movie and implausibilities, so as I know that the reader can get impatient, here are some highlights:
1) several teenagers are trapped in New York, flooded and frozen as temperatures fall to -150 f. So long as they stay indoors and dress like street people and burn books in a fire place, they stay alive for the three days until the storm passes and temperatures return to Saskatchewan like levels. Bilbo, a phd scientist and his two phd sidekicks, are in a remote scottish research station when the bad weather hits them. They are in a lab full of wood furniture, paper and other combustibles, yet the screenwriter has them die because their generator runs out of fuel. Why didn't they just light a fire like everyone else who survives?
2) Americans survive the abrupt climate change by moving to Mexico. The screenwriter has this scenario entail the US foregiving all third world debts in return for taking in climate refugee americans. We are supposed to believe that Americans will live happily ever after in their new homes and their now debt free southern hemispheres bestest pals. At this point, even I was saying "As if". Why are third world countries poor? Mostly because they have limited resources for their populations, very little productive capital for the population and low productivity as a result. Taking in Americans whose financial wealth is gone would only make things worse. Consider that most AMericans live in the northern states which in the movies are buried and destroyed by snow and ice. Consider that most Americans have most of their wealth held as real estate/property which is now worthless as it is buried under snow and ice. They have no wealth. They are bust. They also have no jobs since their economy "got blowed up". If you want to argue that the US government can just print money to pay for what AMericans need, think again. The US currency value is ultimately backed by the production/income of the US economy which in this movie is gone.
3) the portrayal of science and scientists is really strange in this movie. My understanding is that it can take years to analyse things like ice cores but in this movie, Quaid's character has his total data ready to go in hours. QUaid's character also works with mathematical models of climate that use so much data and are so complex that they require all of the federal government's mainframe computing power, yet once running the model provides estimates within minutes right down to the house address where the next nasty weather event will occur. So much for chaos theory and the unpredictability of weather. SImilarly, Bilbo lacks the computing power to analyse his masses of data, but he can email the masses of data to Quaid instantly. Man, I want to sign up with that internet service provider. I guess Dennis doesn't have the old 10MB limit on his inbox.
4) Don't get me started on the Antarctic survival suits that have the fur around the hood and I am guessing, the finest "fill that is not down" for insulation. Hoser style snowmobile suits look like the inspiration for these outfits. Also, in -150 f, people die instantly but with these suits on, the characters are so warm that they can have the skin on their faces exposed and even take their mitts off to fix some gear.
So really, what can one say in a positive way about a movie that was intended to educate the movie going masses about the dangers of climate change? First, it would be an excellent candidate for MST 3000. Second, it really is someone ripping off the scenarios of an earlier scary story, THe Stand by Stephen King but in that one, instead of climate change, it is a bad flu that does in New York. When should rent this film? Probably even the day after the day after the next day after the day after tomorrow.
MTV.com - News -Ashlee Owns Up, Takes Responsibility For 'SNL' Lip-Synch Snafu
MTV actually addresses the issue. I wonder if this will be the end of her "reality" show? Oh... wait a minute, I don't care.
MTV.com - News -Ashlee Owns Up, Takes Responsibility For 'SNL' Lip-Synch Snafu
MTV.com - News -Ashlee Owns Up, Takes Responsibility For 'SNL' Lip-Synch Snafu
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Ashlee Simpson Channels Milli Vanilli
On last night's SNL, Ashlee Simpson's voice track played too soon, revealing her to be a lip syncher. Big shock to nobody.
Check out the video. At the end of the show, she blamed the band!
From Lucky Magazine interview:
LM: What are your takes on lip-synching?
AS: I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me.
Check out the video. At the end of the show, she blamed the band!
From Lucky Magazine interview:
LM: What are your takes on lip-synching?
AS: I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me.
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