Where have all the floxspects gone?

Just in time for Live Earth, that sprawling collection of rivetheads (translated: standardized) chanting for more gore (translated: they want blood) while twisting up some scadoobers (translated: they's smoking pot they is), comes evidence from ice-core samples in Greenland (translated: that frozen-ass tundra way north of you) that the Earth was once much warmer than it is today. Hell, those Vikings didn't call it Greenland because it was environmentally friendly. (Also here.) Good thing they cut down on their carbon emissions though, whew! Make way for Boca Raton condos!

That won't stop all the pledging going on, all the back-patting and ass-grabbing, jerking off into the microphone and general faux heartfelt testimony from has-beens and who-the-hells, nor all the giggling carbon offset merchants (I got your carbon offset right here buddy) patrolling around Giants Stadium today looking for a sucker or 10,000. I love that pledge they've got -- here, I'll add my own, hand on heart, I solemnly pledge:

• I will change four light bulbs to hotter incandescents at my home
• I will drive my SUV lazily around the Wal-Mart parking-lot
• I will shop for whatever electronics and appliances I desire
• I will forward an amusing ManBearPig Youtube message to 5 friends (I'm super-cereal you guys)
• I will damned well leave all my shit ON!

There you go, add my name. Feels good to save the world, huh?

But ho! How come Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) is now known as just Yusuf? Seems worthy of a fatwa if you ask me, but then I've always been hot-headed when it comes to apostates and infidels.

Fudge to this list! Only one entry even belongs on it. This is what happens when you let the Internet masses decide things, they get it all wrong, go parochial and numbskulled. (As the philosopher said, the principal problem with Democracy is that an electorate of trolls will elect a troll for their leader.) This should be the real list:

• Pyramids of Giza
• Great Wall of China
• Saturn V Rocket
• USS Enterprise Supercarrier (CVN-65)
• International Space Station
• Panama Canal
• The Atomic Bomb

And these were the "finalists":

• Brooklyn Bridge
• Petronas Towers
• Three Gorges Dam
• Channel Tunnel
• Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building
• The Hubble Space Telescope
• Concorde 001
• Boeing 747
• St. Peter's Basilica
• Eiffel Tower
• Neuschwanstein Castle
• Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge
• Taipei 101
• Empire State Building
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Hoover Dam
• Aswan High Dam
• The Pentagon
• Hagia Sophia
• Palm Islands
• Angkor Wat
• The Acropolis
• Beethoven's 9th Symphony

All of these things kick ass. Now screw you guys.>

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's letter to the Navy Secretary recommending they name a new destroyer after the Dean of Science Fiction.

Most summers I relax school-teacher style and skip work, lounge on the porch with a fat cigar and a fat novel, scare the cats away when they come to investigate (nasty rodents), and waste lifecycles. Lately I've been catching up on Harry Potter because everybody's all Harry Potter, oh JK please write more of this shit we need more Harry oh! and I wanted to put the hub next to my bub.

So I started with the Order of the Phoenix since I didn't know what happens in that one (I've seen the movies, see), and it's all huge, like 12,000 pages of Quidditch practice and hiding under the invisibility cloak (how practical is an invisibility cloak that's so freaking big three teenagers can safely hide under it?) and everybody getting all jumpy whenever Harry says "Voldemort." And this Harry Potter that everybody loves, this little dick, is so self-consumed and naive that he [SPOILERS] drags all his friends into what is obviously a trap where they're all almost killed, the adults have to rush in to save them, and Harry's Uncle Sirius bites it in the Archway of Death. All -- unequivocally -- because of Harry Potter. What a little douche!

The movie-ization for this one starts tomorrow I think, and I like the movies, but the kid that plays Harry has grown up all weird-looking (I'm sure the producers are annoyed by this) and he's kind of difficult to look at for too long. Hopefully they'll avoid close-ups.

Ah well, the next volume, Half-Blood Price is due to arrive at my door any moment now. My goal is to finish it before the final volume is released later this month.

Sucked A Lot:

The notion that whales somehow communicate through water and across interstellar distances with some alien (whalian?) intelligence.

Nobody at Star Fleet Command or indeed the entire Earth system can figure out what the intruder Big Dumb Object is broadcasting at them. But Spock can. And the Klingon ship is able to help identify an extinct Earth mammal.

The concept of time travelling to a precise point in the past (or future) merely by sling-shotting around the sun at a great velocity.

Spock's speech about the 20th century's "dubious flirtation with nuclear fission reactors resulting in toxic side effects"

"Collecting photons" from a nuclear reactor in order to power the starship. And how come this 20th century technology is able to do what can't be done in the 23rd?

Scotty doesn't know how to use a computer mouse but is able to immediately design a complex molecular model with unfamiliar software on an ancient desktop computer.

McCoy cures a woman's kidney disease with a pill.

The hospital escape scene complete with keystone cops, disguised doctors, and startled lookers-on.

How the weather clears up in a matter of seconds after the new whales arrive in San Francisco bay and tell the BDO to go home.

Sucked A Little:

It's a bit too consciously humorous for a Star Trek movie, at times bordering on slapstick.

The implication that whales are from outer space.

Nobody stumbles upon a cloaked Klingon ship sitting in the middle of Golden Gate Park. And it's sunny outside.

Spock mind-melds with a whale and learns how annoyed the species is that they've been hunted near to extinction.

All the remarks about how primitive 1980s San Francisco is compared to the 23rd century. These people should try to imagine what it was like before the invention of the replicator made everyone's lives all soft and cushy.

Sulu's mysterious off-camera acquisition of a helicopter, and his subsequent unobserved delivery of numerous massive sheets of 6 inch plexiglass to a point high above Golden Gate Park (from which point the plexiglass seems to disappear).

Didn't Suck:

Much of the humor, like Chekov asking directions to the "nuclear wessels" (reminded my of Futurama: "Now say 'nuclear wessels.' 'No!'"), or Spock peppering his speech with "colorful metaphors"

The smurfy hats on the Vulcan ship engineers are hilarious. (Recently parodied on South Park.)

The whole film has actually aged better than I expected; I enjoyed watching it again.

Sucked A Lot:

Most of the writing: terrible plot, poor dialogue, inexplicable character behavior, and a general cheesiness. Worst Star Trek ever!

The scene with Dr. McCoy's dying father: "Not long after, they found a cure! A goddamn cure!" [Awful!]

Sybok's (the mad Vulcan who hijacks the Enterprise and guides it to the center of the galaxy to find God) unexplained skill in gaining devoted followers by "showing them their pain". Huh?

Sybok's plan to lure a starship to Nimbus III. If the Enterprise's transporter had been working there would have been no movie.

The ending. The Klingons didn't even need to be in this movie. The audience is expecting some kind of battle and they get nothing. I felt a little embarrassed for that Klingon commander.

The numerous opportunities Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had to just beat the crap out of Sybok and be done with it.

Sulu and Chekov lost in the forest. Don't they have GPS in the 23rd century?

The "Great Barrier" from which no ship or probe has ever returned, until the Enterprise and a Klingon ship happen to go there, then there's no problem.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" around the campfire.

The alien bar on Nimbus III with such meager production values that I thought I was watching an old Doctor Who episode. Even some dim lighting would have been an improvement.

Sucked A Little:

Special effects. Some of the film's effects were okay, especially the phaser and photon torpedoes, but mostly they were lackluster. ILM was unable to work on this film, and their substitute was so awful that most of the film's ending had to be cut because it looked so bad.

The energy creature on Shakari. Perhaps an homage to the several Original Series episodes involving super-powerful energy creatures; or perhaps a complete cop-out.

The malfunctioning Enterprise A. What a shoddy shipbuilding facility that Star Fleet is running. They should really consider outsourcing.

Nimbus III and Shakari both look much like the Mojave Desert in California.

The Romulan woman's awkward acting in her two or three scenes.

Uhura's dance on the dunes.

The Enterprise manages to travel to the center of the galaxy in about half an hour.

Didn't anyone ever get around to naming Nimbus III? I presume that tv and film writers think putting numbers after names makes the place sound skiffy, but it's a tired cliche now, so enough. We don't call our planet Sol III, and the Martians don't call theirs Sol IV.

Didn't Suck:

The music. Jerry Goldsmith composed a score far better than the film deserved.

Some of the dialogue. "Please Captain, not in front of the Klingons."

The camaraderie between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

I'm torn between loving this show and being disappointed with it. It has many of the David Milch trademarks some of us grew to love about Deadwood: elaborate, complex dialogue, often in the form of soliloquies; much time devoted to peripheral characters whose function it seems, like the two old men on the Muppet Show, is merely to observe and make occasional commentary (some of the actors from Deadwood have even been cast for these roles); other characters defined almost entirely by their idiosyncrasies, often whose obsessions or addictions drive their behavior; and stories that deal largely with people trying to figure out how to live with one another. Add to this the unabashedly strange John Monad ("the one") who may be an extraterrestrial or may be Jesus reborn, and who seems to learn how to function in the world as he moves through it (usually getting it wrong). John's influence seems to cause magical ripples in the lives of the other characters: miraculous cures, bodies levitating off the ground, manna presumably from Heaven (once in the form of an American Express card); as well as very human effects: John obviously needs to be cared for, so he's passed from one character to another, each eager to do the caring.

Which is all very nice and makes for an interesting and entertaining hour of serial entertainment. And yet -- and yet! -- there remains my less than casual interest in surfing, my less than total admiration for surfers, and my less than enthused enthusiasm for surfing culture (or California for that matter). Is John From Cincinnati good enough to transcend its mileiu? Sort of. But add to that the lingering resentment that this is the reason Deadwood went away, this is why there's no more Al Swearengen. Is it adequate compensation? No. How could it ever be? But considering all the other crap on television, I'll take it and smile.

Springfield, Vermont is now the official home of the Simpsons. Because of some contest promoting the new movie. Which is... outrageous! Vermont is like New Hampshire's uptight, argumentative sibling, always shouting slogans at political rallies or dumping red paint on old fur-wearing widows while New Hampshire stays at home watching Star Trek or getting drunk on cheap beer. Vermont is full of itself, surprised to be situated on the Eastern side of the country instead of the Northwest, and always frowning because of it, sternly glaring around at its more laid-back neighbors and tsk-tsking their use of SUVs and propane. Even Vermont's ice cream is obnoxious. So how could the Simpsons, America's perfectly exaggerated every-family, possibly live there? Wouldn't they have been driven out by now? I was really rooting for Ohio.

Do you suppose they teach math at that Hogwarts school? Science? Reading and writing English in addition to Ancient Runes? Just wondering.

Google has this beta thing called Google Co-op which allows users to create their own "search engines" -- which is to say, windows into a configurable subset of Google's web index. These mini-Googles can then be placed on web pages or accessed through Google itself, all always with the embossment of the ad column of course. Anyway, I in my doldrums produced this Important Work Search Engine, mainly so I can in future easily find my reminders about things like setting the java version in Ubuntu, or list all the Coventry vignettes, or whatever.

I see a lot of indie films. Not that they're so great, they're rarely better than average, but the theater experience is so much better with these films than with the multiplex blockbusters. A quiet little theater older than my parents in a clean little nearby town (town as in town, with town stuff in it); freshly brewed coffee; smell of moldering uphosltery; zero advertisements, as in none, no advertisements. So average low-budget indie films have enough consolation to be worth-while due to the manner of their presentation; but imagine the thrill when a good one, an actually good one comes along.

Anyway, check out Brick, especially if you like film noir; I guess it's sort of an homage to that genre, with evident influences like The Third Man, Chinatown, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep. Its got a film-noir style and dialogue ("The ape blows or I'll clam") but it's set in a modern high-school where the kids are all as serious as Sam Spade or Johnny Rocco, which is a completely cool idea, and executed perfectly. Its also got some of the best writing I've noticed in a long time, dialogue so intricate I want to watch it again at home with a remote in my hand so I can listen to it all. And its got Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun, who it turns out is a hell of an actor.

So wait a moment. (I've got about 100 pages let in Half-Blood Prince.) But wait. This dude Snape, back in the day, essentially tells Lord Voldemort he should kill Harry Potter and his parents -- what amounts to Conspiracy to commit multiple murders -- as well as whatever else a Death Eater gets up to during the course of his servitude to the Dark Lord (theft, arson, protection schemes with the local wand store), and yet -- and yet! -- they still let him teach eleven-year-olds at the Hogwarts School? Whaaaaat?

This movie is surprisingly entertaining. I almost passed on it with the proverbial "Nah" -- Kevin Costner as a serial killer? Bah! -- but the 7.7 user rating at IMDB persuaded me (although many of those users over there are chumps, and have misled me many times before -- I'll have the necks of all the chumps when I am the Dark Lord!). I particularly enjoyed William Hurt as Marshall, the personification of Mr. Brooks's dark side; it is the conversations between Brooks and Marshall, often while some oblivious other character looks on, that make this rise above its genre. That and Mr Brooks's fervent desire to stop killing, and his efforts to do so by attending AA meetings.

Careful though, this movie also stars Demi Moore; I know how unsettling that can be. Demi (or is it Demi? I think it's Demi) plays both the obligatory cop obsessed with tracking down the bad man, as well as the obligatory female lead toughing it out in a man's world. She's not for a moment believable as a cop, but it really doesn't detract much from the movie.

I'm a newcomer to this Hairy Potter thing. (Well okay I read the first one years ago but couldn't be bothered with any more of them; I think I was into Iain M. Banks at the time, next to whose Culture Rowling's little Wizard World is a bit of an eye-roller.) But now that I'm eagerly awaiting the final installment -- along with nine million other nincompoops -- I find a kind of sadness settling over me, a sort of dismay at the ending of it all. Which is hard to understand since: 1) I find Harry himself a bit of a prat (as the Anglos would say); 2) I think the Hogwarts school is kind of ridiculous, Quidditch mostly annoying, and Dumbledore better off dead; and 3) Lord Voldemort would totally get his ass kicked if he ever got into a fight with Lord Vader. A-and the wands, I don't know, especially in the movies, grown men and boys prancing around with those wands, it's a little, well, it's just not quite as cool as Gandalf with his heavy sword and staff, the tools of men (albeit magic men) and not, like, Tinker Bell.

And yet -- and yet! -- I do enjoy it all somehow. I like the conflicts and camaraderie between the students; I like the weird magical artifacts and spells (I would totally be a Dark Wizard if I were a wizard: I'd dye my hair and everything; change my name to some anagram of my real name (just to give my enemies something to work on while I plot their destruction); and I'd wear robes and a cloak and put each hand into the other hand's sleeve, is what I would do). I like Snape. And Moody. I want Malfoy to die in agony. I want an invisibility cloak. I want more of this shit. I read 96,000 pages of Harry Potter over the last couple weeks and still want more of it. How 'bout that?

Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later) ventures into hard science fiction with yet another adaptation from source material by that sludge-pump Alex Garland (The Beach), and once more ignites my extreme ambivalence. It's the year 2050 or something, and the sun is going out for some reason, so the Earthlings send a spaceship to deliver a gigantic nuclear bomb into the heart of the dying star (this is just backstory here, no spoilers), which is somehow supposed to jump-start it into a chain-reaction of fissiony goodness, I don't know. The ship, called Icarus (I would have named it Phoenix -- Icarus is a stupid name for this mission) doesn't return, so the persistent hairless monkeys send a second ship, cleverly named Icarus II, with another bomb on the same mission seven years later.

It is unclear why this needs to be a manned mission, but they cram about ten people in there anyway just so we can have some entertainment. The Icarus II shares many interior design features with Alien: grime, unwashed crew, noisy mess hall, cockpit chick, shit dangling from the ceiling because they ran out of brackets to hold it up with, drooling HR Geiger creature (well, not that last one); but the ship is somewhat more realistic than the Nostromo: it is modular and unsymmetrical (like a huge version of the ISS); has a greenhouse for oxygen, and solar panels for power; spins for artificial gravity (sometimes -- they're kind of lax about that), and has lots of airlocks to slam in the face of a wild-eyed pursuer. In addition to Alien there are also elements of Solaris (the sun is sort of a character itself here, and also a religious thing, also really hot), and of Event Horizon, and of -- eeeegh -- Armageddon (the thing with the bomb, see). It's not much in originality. As for the story, well, remember how 28 Days Later (also written by Sir Garland) was great until about the third act and then suddenly really sucked donkey ass?

But fudge to all that, because Boyle does a better job directing than Garland does writing. The sense of riding a deteriorating machine into the sun (set the controls for the heart of the sun) while the only connections with home are slowly stripped away behind you is strong -- and that's a powerful concept, the mounting tension plausible, and the behavior of the crew mostly coherent. And the cast is also good: it's got that dude Cillian Murphy (hero-protag from 28 Days Later) who always looks as though he's just seen a brutal dog-fight and his dog lost; it's got Michelle Yeoh but she doesn't kick anybody's ass; and it's got that guy from Fantastic Four who can fly around (Chris Evans), and he pretty much plays the same character here, but this time it's more appropriate. So there's that, right? My rating: 6of10 Icaruses.

This is surprising, and potentially alarming. What do they want exactly? What happens to Space Ship X and Virgin Galactic? I'm all perplexiated. I fear the future has grown a bit dimmer for private spaceflight.

For all those sugarplum waffles who need a lesson, here was my position on the Iraq invasion in August 2002, seven months before the war began. If only you had listened, Dr. Condoleezza!

10 Webisodes of Farscape! Each of them -- get this now -- between -- wait for it -- three and -- even, yes -- six minutes long. That's minutes long. As in... well, minutes. Which is, how do they say it, um, magra-fahrbot? And almost not worth the bother.

Check out this new mp3 from Travis Morrison, formerly of Dismemberment Plan, presently of Travis Morrison Hellfighters. The album -- All Y'all -- is due August 21. Learn more here.

They should take that Iraqi football team that won the Asia Cup or whatever and make them the Iraqi government. Why not? The current government seems to be corrupt and unstable, and these guys have proved they can work well together. And most importantly they have the love and support of the Iraqi people. They can learn all that governing shit later. Somebody get me Dr. Condoleezza, I want to discuss this idea.

It's pilot preair time of year! This is when all the television pilots get sent out to media whores who promptly post them onto the Internet (spreading the disease to the rest of us). I admit I love television pilots; they usually suck but there's something about the newness of them, the odor of recent labor, the reek of fresh failure; and you never know when a non-suck series will leap into your lap and snuggle around down there, sniffing and huffing and causing you wonderful moisture! Um, here goes:

Aliens in America
Misleading title! I was hoping for Coneheads or Fourth Rock from the Sun and what I got was this annoying sitcom about a Pakistani exchange student in Wisconsin. It made me want to strangle myself with my own intestines. Which is hard to do so I didn't.

The Big Bang Theory
A throw-away comedy about two nerds who live across from a hot chick. Some laughs were discernible.

Bionic Woman
Promising, pending some evolution. The version I saw lacked some post-production effects and dialogue, and rumors persist that more changes will be made (for instance they're replacing the sister for whatever reason). It's produced by David Eick, one of the Battlestar Galactica producers (the one without the bloated ego), and while I frequently revile that program and all its silly aspects, it's nice to see three of its actors -- Katee Sackhoff, Mark Sheppard, and Aaron Douglass -- getting new work here (albeit in "recurring" roles). Also its got Miguel Ferrer (Twin Peaks, Robocop), yes it does.

Californication
David Duchovny must reconnect with his daughter after splitting with his wife! Well, it's not quite that bad but it does have the young daughter thing (pesky conscience!) and the split-from wife thing (oh the anxiety!). Mostly he goes around having sex with lots of hot women, and it's kind of funny I guess (especially the opening, which takes place in a church), and it's on Showtime so there's naked people and profanity, but Duchovny will always be Fox Mulder, sorry dude, and it's hard to stop wondering when the aliens and the men in black are going to show up.

Cavemen
This may be the worst television program I have ever watched half of.

Chuck
To be succinct, Chuck sucks. Don't listen to the eager fanboys craving Jake 3.0 or Alias the Dude, or even the perennially frustrated browncoats eager to see Firefly alumni not sucking (this has Adam Baldwin in it, but he saves nothing and nobody), this show sucks, it sucks, and it sucks. First of all, the premise is stupid: gawky college dropout gets an email from his former roommate, now in the CIA, which -- by showing him flashing images on his computer screen -- somehow downloads gabillions of government secrets into his otherwise numb skull, and now both the CIA and the NSA (that's right!) have sent goons (pet peeve No. 72: NSA Goons) to track him down. Furthermore! The special effects are terrible (although they could just be placeholders). And finally! ABC or Warner Bros or whoever should really consider hiring a technology consultant or a writer who isn't a computer illiterate when producing their computer-technology centric programs. It does have a hot spy chick though.

Damages
This is sort of like The Devil Wears Prada with lawyers. Glenn Close is some kind of super lawyer bitch-zilla, and there's a young hottie starting out working for her. It's on FX though so it's not too needlessly child-proofed. I love FX. Second only to HBO. But gaining!

I Hate My 30s
I lasted nearly seven whole minutes watching this sitcom! If I hadn't already watched Cavemen I would have been stunned by how awful it is.

Lipstick Jungle
An hour-long written by Candace Bushnell (Sex and the City) about three powerful businesswomen in the insular city of the Manhattoes. It's pretty much like what I just implied it was like (aside from the Melville reference).

Pushing Up Daisies
A new series from Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls) is like learning there will be rainbows in the sky once a week until they prematurely cancel them (whoever produces the rainbows that is). It's got his trademark wackiness and beautiful writing, goofy characters, oddball occupations, and so on. This is probably the best of the new pilots.

Reaper
I was worried this would be a Dead Like Me rip-off, but it's different enough to ignore the similarities. And it's actually kind of funny. Stupid, but funny. It's got devil dogs. And it's got Ray Wise (Twin Peaks again) as the devil. Also, Kevin Smith directed the pilot, which is at least interesting. And the premise is great: this dude's parent's sold his soul to the devil before he was born, and now he has to go work for the Dark Lord hunting down escapees from Hell. Which he would rather not do.

Sarah Connor Chronicles
Spun off from the Terminator franchise, it's hard to see how they can make an entire series out of this premise -- it was barely enough for two movies (and didn't stretch far enough to keep the third one from repeating material). Still, robot assassins from the future -- how could I possibly resist watching every minute of it? It takes place after the second movie with Sarah and her son, the future leader of the human resistance to the domination of the ruthless machines, on the run and hiding as more terminators are sent back to attack them. Their defender now is a cute little terminator chick played by Summer Glau (Firefly) who has trouble pulling off the robot-from-the-future routine, and looks kind of silly pretending. Lena Headey does well as the bad-ass Sarah Connor though, so there's some hope. Also both she and Glau get naked in the pilot. Yippee!

I'm sick of that gasbag Google, I'm not impressed with its performance these days. Since I've been playing around with indexing the nonsense scribbled on this website (importantwork.com that is) I've found some gaping holes in Google's familiarity with it. Consider -- if you will -- the search terms site:importantwork.com india run on both Google and MS Live. Google boldly returns a single result whereas MS Live produces five! Five times the results on MS's search site than on Google's. And if that's true for this website, how could it be false for all the others?

The often scorned ask.com (and the Teoma engine) gets six results, as does Clusty (which generously tosses in some related results as well), while everybody's beloved Yahoo (and thus AltaVista and AlltheWeb) returns a meager two. New Google wannabe Accoona gets no results at all, while Excite returns a bunch of ads masquerading as search results.

Danny Boyle and his mopey cohort Alex Garland checking into my head again with 28 Weeks Later (okay, they're called "executive producers" on this one, which I guess just means they get a paycheck for letting someone else play on their intellectual property), which is a sequel to that zombie ode 28 Days Later. This one takes place 28 weeks later. Yes it does. And like its predecessor it starts off very well, especially in the opening scenes. It's got Robert Carlyle (a great and underused actor) as a zombie-plague-virus-thing survivor. It's got the US Military occupying London (the Isle of Dogs anyway). And it's got zombie-plague-virus creature things. But! It's got a military commander who does a lot of illogical things, a bunch of nonsensical plot elements, two annoying children, a soldier who should have been fragged long ago, and not much of a plot. However! It's got a nice ending, a hot chick, some beautiful abandoned city sets, great effects, and decent music. So! 6of10 zombie-plague-virus-creatures.