Bryan's Buxtrosion.com
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "matherd" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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11:59 pm
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A Pointer
I'd like to leave a few breadcrumbs here pointing toward my photos on flickr. I add new photos regularly, so check 'em out. You can catch Amy's latest knitware on her blog at http://spinalcat.blogspot.com. I also would like to remind everyone that you can always find me at http://buxtrosion.com.
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10:19 pm
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PANCAKE ROBOTS
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10:51 pm
[Link] | I just remembered I have a LiveJournal account.
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01:40 pm
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What you should know before you see Terminator: Salvation
I love "Garfield Minus Garfield" (garfieldminusgarfield.net). It's this website (and book) where someone has gone through years of Garfield comics and removed the obnoxious Garfield character from every frame, resulting in a much better comic strip. Likewise, I applaud the futile attempts made by various netizens to edit Jar Jar Binks out of Star Wars: Episode Crap. Sometimes, there's that one character in a movie that just makes you wince whenever he opens his mouth.
Well, one day, this director named "McG" was sitting around with his best friends, Carl's Reiner, Dick in a Box, and Wendy's Super Value Menu Director, watching TV. They decided to watch something from Netflix Instant, and Netflix recommended they see one of the greatest films of all time, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Netflix recommended it because McG had enjoyed one of James Cameron's other films, Titanic, which is about robot mermaids or something. (I think. I haven't actually seen Titanic. Instead, I opted to watch "I'm on a Boat", an erudite musical display from the same artists who brought you "Dick in a Box".) Also, the Netflix Recommendation AI tends to give a boost to movies about AI to "help a brother out".
Anyway, McG said to himself. "This movie's okay, but you know what would make it really great? If Arnold Schwarzenegger weren't in it." And thus, "Terminator: Salvation" was born.
I haven't seen "Terminator: Salvation" yet, but if you are going to see it, it's important that you know the backstory of the Terminator as presented in the first 3 films. Here is a synopsis.
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In 1997, or 2004, or a few years after the next sequel is made, the Terminator is born after an illicit affair between Skeletor and Destro. As the Terminator is growing up, anger grows within him over the fact that his parents can't legally marry. You see, the homophobic Prince Adam has banned gay marriage in Eternia, deeming it "not fabulous enough". On the Terminator's sixteenth birthday, he dresses up like James Dean and runs away from home. He is eventually adopted by a cranky old DARPA project named "Skynet", who convinces him the world would be a better place if they killed all the humans.
(Yes, I know the idea of a DARPA project actually producing a working deliverable stretches your ability to suspend disbelief. Stay with me, here.)
Anyway, Skynet is emotionally abusive to the Terminator, constantly telling him that, since he doesn't use emacs, he's not a "real mandroid". But the Terminator wants to prove himself to his adopted father, so he sets out to kill Skynet's #1 enemy, John Connor. Skynet hates John Connor because John is always hogging their shared cable modem bandwidth to download torrents of Three's Company and other sitcoms "filled with talking bags of meat and water".
But the Terminator is too much of a wuss to pick a fight with an adult male directly. So he tries leaving passive-aggressive notes around John's apartment to try to get him to kill himself. Unfortunately, the Terminator is unsuccessful. He doesn't really understand human emotions, having learned about them only by studying Keanu Reeves movies. The notes he leaves, such as "RETORT~3.VOX NOT FOUND. INSERT DISK 2." and "KNIGHT TO ROOK 2" mostly just confuse John.
Undaunted, the Terminator forms another plan. He must kill John before he is born. After researching "how is babby formed" on the Internet, he learns he needs to "do way instain mother". This, combined with having just watched the new Star Trek movie, and identifying with the emotionless ladies-man Spock, leads the Terminator to decide he must go back in time and kill John's mom. With help from Planned Parenthood, he builds a time machine that will send him back to 1984 (in the nude) so he can beat up pregnant women.
But, John finds out about the Terminator's plan by reading his livejournal that the Terminator didn't think anyone knew about. John does what any sane person would do. He sends Pavel Checkov back in time to impregnate his mom a couple more times -- just to make sure.
Long story short, a pregnant woman kicks the Terminator's ass.
His ego badly beaten, the Terminator roams the country taking odd jobs. While sweeping the floor at a military complex, he meets a pimply kid named Matthew Broderick who teaches him the only way to win is to not fight. The Terminator becomes a pacifist and befriends the young John Connor and teaches him Spanish. They have a close call when the boy drops a thermometer on the floor and gets mercury everywhere.
Then this psycho bitch with a robot arm shows up claiming that John Connor "stole the best years of her life" or something, and she wants child support or whatever. The Terminator sweeps her off her feet. After a very rough tryst in a public bathroom, they get married and everybody lives happily ever after.
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08:02 pm
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My Review of Star Trek
First off, J.J. Abrams clearly doesn't understand the Star Trek franchise. If he had seen any of the last 4 films, he would know that action and excitement have no place in the Star Trek universe. Take "Insurrection" (1998) for example. You probably didn't sit through the entire thing, but if you had then you would know, the film was 103 minutes of nothing but a close-up of Riker's beard growing. Classic Trek. As a random punk on Gilman St was saying Saturday night, "Star Trek isn't about explosions. Trek is for dorks. They already took Transformers from us. They can't have this, too." He's right. (I think. I haven't seen Transformers. Instead I opted to rent "Transmorphers", a staggering work of porn without sex from the same auteurs who brought you "Snakes on a Train" and "Pirates of Treasure Island".)
Furthermore, I'm quite disappointed that in the year 2233 women in space still give birth on their backs. I was expecting a zero-G birth in a sphere of water held in place by tiny jets of air. I was sorely disappointed.
There were some good things about the film, though. I'm glad that J.J. Abrams had the courage to hire filmmakers with disabilities. For example, several of the camera men seem to be suffering from Parkinson's disease with occasional bouts of epileptic seizures. And I have to assume the cinematographer was blind, because medical science has not yet uncovered any cases of people being sexually attracted to lens flares.
It's also nice to see Uhura's background expanded from space secretary to full fledged exo-linguist. The way Kirk described it (morphology, phonology and syntax, oh my!), it almost sounded sexy. They made a joke about her being good with her tongue. Unfortunately, actual conversations with linguists are rarely so sexy:
Orion slave girl: I could ***** your **** with my *******.
Exo-linguist: It's interesting that you used a subjunctive auxilliary modal verb. In an interrogative speech act, that would have indicated submissiveness. But in a declarative sentence, it kind of makes you sound like a tease.
Orion slave girl: Fuck this. I'm gonna go invent the Holodeck so I have somewhere to take my vibrator on dates.
Speaking of sexy, Spock's mom is a total MILF. I find it somewhat ironic that the one woman *without* bangs and pointy ears is the sexiest one on the planet. Go figure.
Another high point was the gratuitous amounts of fan service. Taking a play from the book of George Lucas, the film opens with the entire Enterprise crew being assigned to the same homeroom in kindergarten, where their teacher inexplicably refers to them as "The Star Trek Babies". (I smell a spin-off!) Did you know that Spock built Data when he was a kid? Or that Sulu is Wesley Crusher's real mom? Too good to be true, right? All too soon, the film zips forward to their days at Starfleet "Crazy No Way" Academy, where they all share the tiny dorm room at the end of the hall. Things really get crazy when Kirk tries to date two women at the same time, an Andorian princess named Foozbat and Capt. Morgan of the USS Antilles. Hilarity ensues when Checkov (pretending to be Kirk) tells Capt. Morgan he's "wary in loathe" with her.
Speaking of fan service, these filmmakers know that Captain Kirk is *Captain* Kirk, god damn it! They don't waste any time on any Ensign Kirk or Lt Kirk or Cmdr Kirk bullshit. He doesn't even graduate. He goes straight from suspended college student to Captain of Starfleet's new flagship. Fuck yeah! Forget about that poor 45 year old bastard who's been working as a greeter in Cargo Bay 5 hoping to become a manager some day. Slap a red shirt on that bastard and beam him down to Rigel VII. We need to make room for The Captain.
The movie ends with Captain Kirk giving now-Admiral Morgan a chance to show that "everyone's got a little Captain in 'em".
In conclusion, this is the best trek since Star Trek IV: A Whale of a Time.
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11:33 pm
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Reason for the Season
Happy belated Easter present.
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05:17 pm
[Link] | If you're wondering why I never post anymore, it's because i put more energy into facebook these days.
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04:40 pm
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Asshole-run Healthcare
My health insurance company, Cigna OpenAccess Plus, which had "pre-approved" payment for my jaw surgery before I had it, changed their mind a couple of months after the surgery and is now refusing to pay for it. This is, of course, perfectly legal under U.S. law, which allows health insurance providers to change their minds about payment up to a year after a medical procedure. If I can't convince them to change their minds again, I'll be out more than $4000 extra. This is part of why I think private health insurance companies and all of their employees are evil.
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07:28 pm
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01:41 am
[Link] | NOTE TO POLITICIANS: Congratulations! You seemingly realize that doing something isn't necessarily better than doing nothing. At least many republicans do. The democrats are being worthless as usual.
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04:10 pm
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ATTENTION
ATTENTION ALL MEDIA AND JOURNALISTS:
A presidential debate is not something that someone "wins" or "loses".
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06:14 pm
[Link] | Clearly we all going to die immediately if we don't pass a veritable Financial Ermächtigungsgesetz giving the Executive branch absolute final authority over all economic matters without any debate. It's a good thing Congress has a record of bending (over) to the will of the unitary executive as demonstrated by the passage of the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act.
/Godwin
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10:58 pm
[Link] | When two people of differing race or gender are in an advertisement and one of them is wrong/stupid, here's which one:
| White Man | Black Man | White Woman | Black Woman |
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| White Man | | White Man | White Man | White Man |
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| Black Man | White Man | | Black Man | Black Man |
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| White Woman | White Man | Black Man | | White Woman |
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| Black Woman | White Man | Black Man | White Woman | |
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Watch for it. It universally holds true.
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09:55 am
[Link] | http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/sep/right-be-here
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12:38 am
[Link] | The Conservapedia page on Atheism is full of citations, but my favorite is the section that cites Chuck Norris as an authority on atheism on the Internet.
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10:20 am
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It's just bits, damn it!
If "they" charged for email at the rate the evil telecom companies charge for SMS text messages, the personal email I've sent and received over the last three years would've cost $492,560.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/01/atts-text-messages-cost-1310-per-megabyte/
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10:36 am
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The Fascism Never Stops
One of the raids in St. Paul was a meeting of I-Witness Video, "a New York-based media watchdog group that records police activity in order to protect civil liberties". The group as a whole is not accused of any crimes, but the police said they were looking for weapons. The group's real crime was providing video evidence in the trials of so-called rioters at the 2004 New York convention that led to their acquittals. Without such evidence, it would have been the protesters' word against the police and they likely would've been falsely convicted.
I was thinking about listing all of the constitutional amendments this violates, but I'm too lazy to compile such a long list. I'll just start by noting "freedom of association", "freedom of the press", "right to present evidence in one's defense", and "no search and seizure without probable cause".
Thankfully, they didn't burn any children alive this time.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/97110/rnc_raids_have_been_targeting_video_activists_/?page=1
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06:49 pm
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Taxes
From BusinessWeek:
"Diesel vehicles now hitting the market with pollution-fighting technology are as clean or cleaner than gasoline and at least 30% more fuel-efficient.
"Yet while half of all cars sold in Europe last year ran on diesel, the U.S. market remains relatively unfriendly to the fuel. Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline."
Thanks government! I hope those taxes were worth the resulting loss of efficiency and technological competitiveness!
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11:58 am
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Fascism
When you vote for Republicans or Democrats, this is the America you are creating. Is that the country you want to live in? If you need me, I'll be standing in front of the tank.
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09:30 pm
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Fascists
Just read this.
I've lived in China. It's not this bad.
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