pajkossy

Will I get in trouble for this?

2011-11-14T10:54:00.003-05:00

Briefly, you see below first an email that I and many others here at the U of M received today.

Following it you see the salaries (data from last year) of the two signers on the email.

If we are to hope for a kind of social welfare system that is not based on increased taxation or centralized governmental control, do we need to consider different models of economic success and the leadership qualities that may or may not be attendant upon that success? I think I have a different concept of "leadership" than some, and I wonder what you who are reading this might think about it.

Jim Reads Doug Harvey on Gary Panter

2009-01-04T13:54:00.005-05:00

From the recent 2 volume Gary Panter monograph published by Picture Box.

happy birthday

2008-07-26T11:03:00.001-05:00

New Dragon Ash - La Bamba cover

2008-07-08T12:51:00.002-05:00

It's one of those youtube anti-videos where it's just a still image with the song playing.

If you dig the song and want the mp3, here's a link that could die at any moment.

My Next Fun Fitness Project

2008-04-14T15:12:00.002-05:00

I think pretty much anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep fit, but I don't much care for "exercise." And when I put it in quotes I mean to call to mind stuff like running, going to the gym, working out on machines and all that sort of thing.

I like to walk and especially like biking, but I like biking to get from place to place not so much for its own sake. So biking and walking has kept my lower body in pretty good condition for years.

Then a couple of years ago I decided to take up juggling as a way to start working on my upper body. It took me about 4-6 months of practice before I got it down, and now I routinely juggle 3 2-5 pound soft excercise balls - usually while just hanging out at home listening to music. Nothing fancy just straight juggling. It's made a big difference in my arm and shoulder strength.

Several years ago I heard about a freeclimber who trained by doing as many as 2000 pull ups a day. Well, I can do that many, but the elevator in my office has a nice ledge that's nicely spaced down from the ceiling, so I try to get in 3-5 fingertip pull ups in there any time I need to get from floor to floor.

I also am totally down with Wii boxing and DDR as "funxercise."

I've got my upper body and lower body all set now, but what about my midsection?

This is my new project:

I know most of you won't watch the whole 14+ minutes. So I'll tell you that they say backflips are really good for the lower abdominal muscles. Looks way more fun than situps or crunches, doesn't it?

I'll let you know how it goes, and I'm gonna need some volunteers as spotters...

Planet B-Boy Movie Finally Coming to Detroit

2008-04-03T08:18:00.003-05:00

I have not and persistently do not find ballet and modern dance all that interesting. It just doesn't "speak to me" in the way that other art forms do. I think there is a bit of a high art / low art thing going on in this equation because I really love the dancing in, for example, Singin' in the Rain, or Bamboozled, or even Bring it On. I love the tango sequences in Happy Together, and Tangos, the Exile of Gardel too, but ballet and/or modern dance performed on the stage just feels so archaic (is I guess what it is) to me. Just doesn't connect.

Here, on the other hand, is something that connects with me like the nicest possible punch in the face:

It's a sequence that is cleverly nicknamed "Run DMZ": simultaneously referencing rap/hip-hop godfathers RUN-DMC and the DeMilitarized Zone that divides North from South Korea - the ostensible setting for the amazing dance that unfolds in the clip.

This sequence seems pretty indicative of the stuff your going to get when you go see the movie Planet B-Boy , which you will if you know what's good for you.

From a number of clips that I've watched, this movie seems like the latest in a gathering stream of grassroots-ey media products that celebrate people who take globalization into their own hands, as it were, and use the increasing speed with which cultural ideas and products flow across international borders to create bonds of friendship-in-creativity with people that they could never have hoped to even meet mere decades ago.

If you live near me, it opens at the Main Art in Royal Oak on April 25.

Here's the trailer:

How can there be so many awesome Dragon Ash songs?

2008-03-28T14:49:00.001-05:00

REVOLATOR

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

百合の咲く場所で (Yuri no Saku Basyo De)

2008-03-11T11:44:00.004-05:00

Another great song from Dragon Ash. Babel Fish translates the title in a way that seems to make sense: At the Place Where the Lily Blooms.

Listen through the whole thing - I especially love how this song shifts from being quiet and a bit hypnotic to being, well, I'll leave it a surprise for you to discover yourself.

Here's another performance of the same song:

The Bird and the Bee

2008-03-07T16:28:00.000-05:00

Software That Sings

2008-03-06T11:06:00.002-05:00

So we all have software that will read our email to us in funny robot voices.

But.

This is some crazy shit.

There are many other videos of "her" singing on YouTube, some in languages other than Japanese. I like the way the two videos above show a little about how the GUI actually works on the software.

Maybe someone should put out a "Max Headroom Sings" album now.

Andy and I at Red Rocks

2008-02-24T13:02:00.002-05:00

Andy and I went out to Red Rocks yesterday.

This is a great shot of us - I thought it looked very Antonioni with us facing away from the camera and away from each other and all. I dodged in our faces and replaced the sky too. Scroll down for the original.

Chris's New Model

2008-02-17T13:00:00.001-05:00

It's an SD Blaze Zaku Phantom.

I have to do this

2008-02-13T19:41:00.003-05:00

I feel compelled.

It's just the truth.

Plus it's a good piece of "crying media."

This is leadership. These people are leaders. There is no "lesser of two evils" thinking in this song/speech. Of course it overlooks negative things in our country's history, but "there has never been anything false about hope."

Sometimes simple things are significant

2008-02-04T14:27:00.000-05:00

My favorite part is where spectators start applauding 2 minutes in. Made me cry. I love it when groups of people show that they are experiencing positive feelings together in public.

Scientology

2008-01-22T15:23:00.000-05:00

I had a bad experience with Scientology once back in the early 1990s.

I went into a storefront of theirs to take their personality test thing and ended up running out of the building after they had kept me there for about 3 hours (from about 4 to 7 PM) with no offer of food or water. They alternated between having me sit and hang out in a quiet waiting room and calling me into a small room in which a woman would glare at me from across a small table and tell me that I needed help.

In the end, they started to ask questions about my bank accounts at which point I told them I could not make any decisions about spending hundreds of dollars on the spur of the moment. They offered me an initial session for free if I could stay that night, but I was tired and shaking from hunger by that time so I beat a hasty path out the door.

After some time spent in the last week or so looking at videos about Scientology, I found this one on YouTube that is pretty much the scariest of what I came across.

Sometimes the guy behind the camera does seem like a slight bit of a jerk, but for the most part I was pretty impressed by the way he held up under the harrassment of the Scientology men.

Chris!

2008-01-13T19:30:00.000-05:00

Another One

2008-01-11T12:57:00.001-05:00

If this doesn't kill you, then you're already dead.

2008-01-11T12:47:00.000-05:00

God Damn this shit is stupid - and when I say stupid, I mean stupid fresh.

It's a Japanese hip hop group called Dragon Ash. I just discovered them yesterday, so I know very little about them except that they are very, very good.

Chris had a cool idea

2007-12-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

He was at a friend's birthday party yesterday and he got this little plastic slinky. He wanted to make a video with it, so we did.

Here it is:

Ukelele Ultraman

2007-12-07T09:42:00.001-05:00

The flowers shooting from the Baltan's claws are the best.

Unless the Ukelele Lei attack is the best.

Love Forever - Supercar

2007-12-04T11:53:00.000-05:00

find yourself

always keep trying

this needs to be here

2007-12-04T10:56:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to tell you anything about it, so if you want to know you'll have to communicate with me through comments or do some detective work of your own.

It's a film in two parts, and there may be no other film that has influenced me so much as this one.

pt 1

pt 2

Southland Tales: An Extremely Good Movie

2007-11-20T10:13:00.000-05:00

(here's what I sent to IMDB. possible spoilers)

So, did you come here wondering what it's "really" like? Well imagine if Robert Altman and David Fincher co-directed an adaptation of a novel co-written by Philip K. Dick and Chuck Palahniuk. Yes, the fact that I put Fincher and Palahniuk in that sentence together does mean that Southland Tales has an anarchic (in the fullest sense of that word) sensibility similar to that of Fight Club, but I don't think that it's a "guy movie" in the same way that Fight Club is. The sheer originality and depth of this movie is astonishing. Even the way that it achieves its originality is original. What was that? Southland Tales relies heavily on what they call "pastiche" in postmodern theory: it takes a million things you've seen before in a million niches of popular culture and whirls them together like a "Will it Blend: Millenial Americana" YouTube video. Yes, it blends!

There are so many aspects of it that made my jaw drop ranging from the casting of teen idol Justin Timberlake in the role of the facially disfigured narrator, to the bizarre insertion of an incredible precision-choregraphed song-and-dance sequence at the movie's midpoint, to the glorious arrangement for string quartet of the Star Spangled Banner as sung by Mulholland Drive's Rebekah Del Rio.

There were scenes that made me burst into surprised, embarrassingly loud laughter. There were scenes that made me nearly jump out of my seat from the shock. There were scenes that froze me with deer-in-the-headlights terror.

And, oh those casting choices. From numerous Saturday Night Live alumni in both comic and serious roles (including a deadpan, scene-stealing Jon Lovitz) to Highlander Christopher Lambert selling heavy armaments out of an ice cream truck.

Without a trace of irony in his performance.

And that is truly one of the strengths of this film: it refuses to “wink” at the audience. It plays all of it’s irony fast and straight as a Bladeless Lasik IntraLase® laser. It doesn’t have the time to wink, and it doesn’t give you time to blink either. Writer/director Richard Kelly knows how complex and irony-laden this stuff his and he trusts the intelligence of his viewers to keep up with him and not have to be told when to laugh.

And it is a complicated movie, but if it weren't complicated it wouldn't be so good.

See it today!

The Annual Pumpkin Carving Party

2007-10-27T21:58:00.000-05:00

This one's mine:

It's "Real Face Junchoon" from The Five Star Stories

Some Amazing Drawings by Chris

2007-10-25T21:08:00.000-05:00

Chris did some really stunning copies of drawings in a book at his school today.

This is his Pirate:

And this is the original:

Here's his astronaut:

And the original:

Chris Reads a Book!

2007-10-10T13:22:00.000-05:00

Isn't it just the greatest thing ?!

"You've done a man's job, sir. I guess you're through."

2007-10-04T09:06:00.000-05:00

"Finished."

(shouting) NEW PILLOWS!

2007-10-04T08:18:00.000-05:00

How much happier could I be this week?

and a mellow (yet triumphant) one from the new CD:

The new album has at least one song in which Sawao and Co. do their cool thing where they basically re-work an old song into a new one (or at least use a major riff from an oldie) so that the new song has echoes of feeling from the past to tug at the heartstrings of longtime fans like me and my son Chris (he was the one who noticed it first this time). At this point in my life I find it very hard to imagine a world without this band.

This exists:

2007-09-24T10:26:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to describe it, but I will tell you that it made me cry :)

More to love about Supercar

2007-09-24T07:27:00.000-05:00

This morning I discovered that the rhythm of this song so perfectly fit with a most excellent cadence on my bike ride to work.

Mellow, but wonderfully triumphant: Playstar Vista

And I had a great weekend too. Supercar all day every day :)

Anthemic

2007-09-21T07:38:00.000-05:00

Supercar music makes me feel good.

SUPERCAR is my new favorite band!

2007-09-20T09:52:00.000-05:00

Some of their stuff is bit too emo for me, but what the Hell.

Stuff like this (Story Writer):

is so damn triumphant it makes me feel like putting on a cape and leaping into the air with one arm cocked elbow back, fist at hip and the other arm straight out aiming me up into the perfect sunset sky.

I usually don't dig on the Anime Music Videos, but this one is pretty good (same song):

Whatever gets me through the day!

check this out

2007-09-06T21:22:00.001-05:00

My first time at the climbing gym

2007-04-15T20:36:00.000-05:00

This was hard.

I was about 40 or 50 feet up.

I want to go again.

I couldn't help myself

2007-04-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

Excuse my cussing, but please watch this shit until at least the 3 minute mark, or count down to 6 minutes however your browser shows it.

Try do do this at work if possible, LOL

Zizek

2007-03-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

Even though Baudrillard is dead, at least Slavoj Zizek is still alive.

This guy makes me LOL.

Upsetting in so many ways

2007-03-08T14:07:00.000-05:00

The video below I discovered searching on "deleuze" over at youtube.

It's not for the squeamish, as it depicts the construction of an art piece (insert negative value judgement) that involves "needle play" as they appear to call it in S&M/B&D (BS is what I call it) circles.

It reminds me of a joke my dad used to tell me when I was a kid about a man who, when asked why he was hitting himself with a hammer, stopped, breathed a sigh of relief, and then replied, "because it feels so good when I stop."

I'm no world-class expert on Gilles Deleuze, but I don't feel this has much to do with his work.

Baudrillard is dead. Long live Baudrillard.

2007-03-08T13:38:00.000-05:00

From NPR:

"Controversial French philosopher and social critic Jean Baudrillard died Wednesday [3/7/2007]."

He was 77 years old.

For more about him go here.

I feel sad when people die, especially people that I feel close to in whatever way.

It's hard to write that in a way that doesn't just look stupid.

someone spent a bunch of time making this

2007-03-07T15:07:00.000-05:00

In a way it is very stupid, but I like the efforts at English captions for the pics.

English truly is the international language.

One for Lisa

2007-03-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

A video with movie scenes:

And a traditional "music video":

xo

I liked Glenn Greenwald before he was on Salon ;)

2007-02-23T14:16:00.000-05:00

Glenn Greenwald was so awesome today.

Some dogs are dumb

2007-02-20T09:04:00.000-05:00

A dog almost committed suicide today because it was so excited to see me.

I'm riding my bike down the Huron St hill into town this morning when I suddenly hear a woman shouting some indecipherable word over and over again. I glance over in the direction of the sound and it turns out the indecipherable word is the name a very dumb dog - some kind cocker spaniel piece of work - that is racing across all four lanes of one of the busiest streets in Ann Arbor (during AM rush hour, no less).

Lucky for me its breeding mix has given it pretty short legs and it just looks sort of stupidly floppy and non-threatening - I'm going about 15-20 mph on a down hill, so it only takes me a split second to gauge the speeds and distances and know that it isn't gonna catch me.

A male voice then joins in shouting the indecipherable word that's apparently indecipherable to the dog too as cars speed by. Not wanting to see the death, or crash for the distraction (I've been big on keeping my attention focused to minimize risk factors since my accidents last year) I just keep on riding and looking straight ahead. Still, the morbid curiosity in me keeps one ear tuned for telltale sounds.

There were none.

If you live in an urban area, please keep your dog on a leash at all times. Even if you're "just taking him/her out to the car."

I don't like dogs too much in general, but I'd feel bad if your dog killed itself because it was so excited to see me.

The Edwards' campaign bloggers

2007-02-16T14:56:00.000-05:00

Well now that political bloggers are finally getting the attention of the MainStream Media (or MSM as they call it) they're all annoyed that the MSM has ended up (or been manipulated into) focusing on their foul-fingered attempts at humorous venting of spleen.

The progressives cry shame on the MSM who let neo-con bloggers get away with "far worse" but pick on them for using some offensive language.

Cry me a river, guys and gals. I feel like taking a swim today.

Please realize that being a progressive blogger does not mean that you are sitting at home or in a bar doing shots or drinking martinis or chugging beers with your buddies and swearing a blue streak about how much you hate this that or the other thing that conservatives feel very strongly about defending.

Why do I have to tell you that they will throw that stuff right back in your face and it will make your face look really bad to anyone who looks at you for a long time after? You know that they are bullies and jerks right? You know that many of them make a living by being very good bullies and jerks right?

Do you think that they are not going to bully you if you just tape a big ol' sign to your chest that says "bully me" by using language that every 4 year old knows is nasty and naughty. The neo-cons and their media shills usually have to make stuff up to smear people, but you guys and gals just hand them stuff on a silver platter.

If you think I'm going to ask you to "censor" yourselves or "constrain your freedom of speech" then you need to think twice.

I am pleading with you to work on elevating political discourse in this country by getting your keyboard out of the gutter.

This goes for all the commenters too.

Go make assinine comments that you think are clever over on YouTube if you need an outlet for that. The hater community thrives there.

Rage and cry with your friends on the weekend at home or in bars.

Then when you sit down to type on your blog:

CLEAN IT UP!

Have you ever seen REPO MAN on regular cable? They say M-er F-er so many times in that movie, and when they redubbed it for broadcast they made it a better movie.

Guess how...

With genuine creativity they changed that nasty expletive to "Melon Farmer." You know that everyone watching who needed to know knew what the "censors" had done, and I hope you know that saying "melon farmer" a whole bunch of times makes for some serious hilarity.

So figure it out and start being creative and intelligent with your anger instead of just stupid.

10 Pounds of Lead Shot Will Mash Your Packing Peanuts!

2007-02-07T18:26:00.000-05:00

I bought this bag of #12 (believe me when I say, that's the tiniest pellet size you can get) lead bird shot. This stuff is definitely not to be used in the course of hunting for food - unless you like breaking your teeth on the way to getting lead poisoning. It's like very small Christmas cookie sprinkles, only made of shiny black metal.

Why did I search for hours on the internet for this stuff?

Only love or anime could make me do something so odd. To be more precise: building injection-molded plastic mecha (robot) models.

I still haven't gotten around to watching Zeta Gundam - the show from which the model I'm currently working on came, but this Hyaku Shiki (that's "type 100" in Japanese) has some DAMN heavy feet now.

Prior to filling them with the lead shot, which settes in very nicely thanks to it's small size, each foot weighed about 1/4 ounce.

I'll update later with their new weight, as well as the weight of the rest of the kit. For now I'll venture a guess that the feet will weigh almost as much the entire remaining structure.

Pix here when I finish it.

UPDATE:
Each foot now weighs about 1.25 oz, so together they weigh 2.5 oz. This is about how much the whole body from the hips up weighs. This should make the center of gravity low enough for more dynamic poses that an unweighted model could maintain.

Bartender

2007-02-05T14:37:00.000-05:00

...is the title of a recently produced short Anime series (apparently from the fall of 2006).

I just watched the first episode on YouTube.

I'd embed it for you, but the uploader disabled embedding (probably a good idea in terms of keeping it under the "use violation" radar.

In case anyone was wondering, this show exemplifies some of the things I love about anime.

There is a feeling I have about some anime that the creators of certain shows (Kino no Tabi / Kino's Journey is another) are immensely brave, in the same way that filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai and David Lynch are brave. I find them brave because they work in an industry that produces "products" and they add some kind of ethereal, spiritual value to their work that most industrial workers do not even attempt because of the obstacles that have been "institutionalized" into their paths.

Bartender isn't earthshattering by any means, but it makes for a quite lovely and engaging 22 minute diversion into a sort of guided meditation on the world in which we live.

Technically it is very simple: "limited animation"at its most limited - but with luminous, beautifully rendered backgrounds and irresistably attractive character designs.

The story itself is almost like something you'd overhear at a good party - again very simple, but in a small way enlightening and pleasant to witness its unfolding. Also, perhaps more than a little bit far-fetched, but no worse off for it.

If you want to watch it, try this, or go torrent download it at animesuki.com

The Boston Mooninite Thing

2007-02-05T12:07:00.000-05:00

"If someone can go around at night and place these devices throughout the city with ease, what makes one think terrorist couldn't do the same."

This grammatically challenged quote, attributed to some "man on the street" in a New Hampshire online newspaper, pretty much sums up how dumb many people are about terrorism in this country.

This is the sort of stupidity that makes me want to move to a parallel universe where US citizens are educated in logic and reasoning.

If the world was as scary and full of America-hating terrorists as dumbasses like this guy seem to think, then a very high percentage of USers would be dead and dying. This whole Boston thing is proof of the exact opposite. This country is still a pretty safe place. SURPRISE!

Here's a statistic you might not hear anywhere else: Since immediately before (and including) the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy, about 0.001% of the entire US population has been killed by terrorists within our national borders. By contrast, during roughly this same period of time about 0.08% of the entire population has been killed by traffic accidents. That's because over 40,000 people in this country die in car accidents every year, year in and year out. Gosh, that's way more than get killed by terrorists every year isn't it? I'm no lightning calculator, but I think something like 80 times as many people have died in the last few years because of car accidents than have died because of terrorist incidents.

So citizens of Boston, New Hampshire, and everywhere else in this country, STFU about your stupid, irrational fear of terrorism and start driving more carefully. And stop smoking while you're at it, you're killing yourself with that stuff! You could probably stand to eat healthier and get more exercise too.

Let's have more TV news stories about fatal car crashes and grossly obese people in diabetic comas and people dying in cancer wards - that stuff is plenty sensational and disturbing to grab some ratings. It's actually REAL too, unlike this "terrorist threat" BS!

A couple pix for Lisa in Chicago

2007-01-29T09:12:00.000-05:00

Just seconds before the bus arrived this morning - we made it!

One from the holidays that I noticed on my phone when I was grabbing the other one. They're all so adorable.

I had a dream, Lisa, that you and I were in a bar in Kalamazoo and you were making freinds with some youngish woman who - after finding out we were into unusual buildings and photography - took us to a nearby building that had a super wierd thing in the basement that was like a cross between the holding tanks at the water treatment plant, the wild steadicam-following-the-pipes-through-the-walls-of-the-house shot from Soavi's film The Devil's Daughter (La Setta), and the underwater-in-the-basement scene from Argento's Inferno. We just kind of looked around down there together and I woke up before it got too creepy.

It was fun listening to Chris chat with you this morning while I was running around trying to get ready to get out the door.

Halfmania.com

2007-01-19T13:37:00.000-05:00

I just jumped through all the hoops necessary to buy a Wii console from Halfmania for $125.

It took me just over an hour to figure everything out and make my choices of which "offers" to apply for and then fill out all those online forms. As of now - only a half an hour later - I'm still waiting to find out if I'll be verified by all the companies I "applied" to, only one of the 3 needed actually came through with what I would call "instant verification".

I may have bought into a whole bunch of hassle an expense if I can't cancel some of the free or cheap trial offers I applied for - I'll come back with an update on that situation later as things develop.

It looks kind of like a scam, but it's a fairly complicated and detailed scam, so I don't get the feeling that it's a %100 rip-off type scam. Rather I think it is a sort of "if you can't jump through every single hoop we command you to, them you get nothing and we made a few bucks from you" kind of scam. One could also see it as a validation of the "no free lunch" adage - basically you have to work pretty hard, and spend a little money to get your half price thing-that-you-wanted-in-the-first-place (I'm hoping it works out well for me in the end).

Again I'll let you know how things develop.

UPDATE:
two months later...This is a total scam. I got nothing of value from my efforts and $ spent on Halfmania.

Another Political Entry

2007-01-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

I was reading this and its attendant comments section, and found it somewhat heartening that some people really do get the awful, misguided nature of this latest episode of Bush Administration stupidity known as the "troop surge."

It just sucks that soldiers - who are actual humans, after all - get used as pawns in a political game over and over again in this.

It also sucks that there is even one single person in the US who is so uneducated that they are able to write this:

"Personally, I believe the US is in Iraq for two reasons: 1. to make the point that we CAN and WILL take down nations uniting with our enemies, and 2. to provide a landing and unloading zone for an eventual push against Iran - the real evil."

I feel like I cound incredulously re-quote each phrase from the above quote and follow them with an exasperated mixture of question marks and exclamation points.

How can one even begin to set someone (and there are many such "someones," I'm afraid) so deluded on the path to knowledge and understanding?

At least I can feel comforted by the fact that I'm preaching to an understanding choir here.

Thanks be to God for the understanding choir. Maybe we'll inherit the earth together someday. Maybe it's already happening.

The Only Video Game in Our House

2006-12-12T09:10:00.000-05:00

Here's a cut-n-paste of the review I wrote for Amazon:

I bought this for my son (who was a few months short of 5 years old at the time) just after last Christmas (2005) because 1) I knew he wanted a video game of some kind because his friends had them and he felt left out; 2) I did not, and still don't want to get him a video game that's thumbs and fingers controlled only - which rules out most video games; and 3) I found it for only $30 at an after Christmas clearance sale.

I needed to help him alot at first to stay calm and in control within the somewhat narrow parameters of the controller sensitivity, but now he's every bit as good as I am at 38 years of age. He loves playing it with me, and we still play several times a week. He does fine with taking turns because the game is such an active, physical one that he has to take breaks to recharge his own batteries. Also, because of this workout aspect of the game I would say that the longest he's ever been able to play at a stretch is one hour. He happily shuts off the game and comes upstairs with no prompting after he's had enough.

Now, as a kindergartener, he can beat every level boss in the game and is more skilled than neighbor boys twice his age.

One of the things I like best about this game is that it has no scoring of any kind. I suspect the designers sacrificed keeping score in favor of other game features. For such a small and relatively inexpensive piece of electronics the graphics and game play are really amazing. Chris and I are still discovering fun new little tricks almost a year later.

Here's what's in the box:

Why am I putting this on my blog?

I had a thought about this game as compared to other video games last night that hadn't occurred to me before.

Alot of video games (maybe even all of them) that involve fighting against onscreen enemies put the player/spectator in the position of having to hunt down and kill those enemies. Because of the age range that this game here is aimed at, there's no bloody killing of human enemies. Most of the enemies that the player must defeat are robots.

More important and interesting to me, however, is the fact that the limitations of the game technology were used by the developers in a way that reinforces what I think is one of the larger, and most positive, themes of the Star Wars "universe." Because the player is functionally limited to standing more or less stationary, the enemies must come to him or her. The player is not hunting or searching for enemies to fight - he or he is primarily placed in a defensive position. When you're in the game you cannot run away, or be stealthy in anything resembling the guerilla offensive fighting tactics that I think many first person shooter games invite players to employ. I think these guerilla fighting tactics are what worry the people who worry about video games. They certainly give me pause.

In the Lightsaber Battle game there is even a special move that you can do with your lightsaber that is the functional equivalent of a shield you can use in almost any situation where your enemy is attacking you with such intensity that you have no room left for offensive manuvering. As the game progresses though levels you basically have to get better and better at defensive manuvering because the enemies leave fewer and fewer openings for you to attack them. They get better at playing offense, so you must improve you defenses accordingly.

There is something very appealing to me about this notion of a defensively oriented fighting game. In my own limited martial arts training it was made clear to me that fighting skills were used most honorably in defensive mode. I think the Star Wars movies in general promote this position too, especially through their exaltation of the close-combat lightsaber over guns (though guns certainly have their place in these stories too).

Are there other games that do this too?

My Sense of Humor

2006-12-07T09:19:00.000-05:00

I accidentally found this rediculous site that uses "face recognition technology" to find your celebrity lookalikes.

URL cut to prevent linking

Now I know why I love G.W. Bush as if he were my own son.

Some ideas about love and sex

2006-12-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

For me unconditional love (at least at the extreme that I think it ought to exist within a committed domestic partnership) is about a combination (perhaps a paradoxical one) of total acceptance of a person AND a desire to help that person become free from the things that hold them back: to help that person grow and thrive and change and improve - improve even though in the eyes of the beholder in this example that person is already perfect.

It seems to me that one of the BIG things people can do in a marriage (and also as a parent) is learn how to continually (re)discover the proper balance between and integration of these aspects of unconditional love.

True, lasting erotic feelings for the same single individual grow from this process of experiencing and sharing unconditional love - and that process better be self directed too, or it just ain't gonna work out well for anyone concerned.

Sexual arousal can reasonably be a fact of one’s daily life because it can follow naturally from the event of emotionally connecting with people around us in the world. These connections all contain the sparks of unconditional love because unconditional love is something we are each born into, retain a memory of, and have a longing to feel again.

If a man is predominantly heterosexual, when he interacts with a woman in some way that brings to him a feeling of connection with her, then it follows that he may begin to feel an erotic surge toward her. This can feel good and natural and healthy and he needn’t act on it because to do so would be inappropriate much of the time. He can just enjoy it inside himself, or if it does seem appropriate to do so he can attempt a tentative expression of his feelings.

One of the places where some people might reasonably have difficulty is in maintaining a level of this erotic surge in the face of things that might cause distraction from the feeling of connectedness. Unconditional love comes in at this place because unconditional love is like a perpetual motion machine – it keeps on running in the background of a relationship that it is an established part of, even when things happen that would shut down the erotic progression of an interaction in a relationship where unconditional love had not been created.

These “shut down” events happen all the time in the absence of established unconditional love relationships – trying to “pick someone up” who isn’t interested for whatever reason, and being rejected. They also happen all the time even in the presence of unconditional love - stopping oneself from sexually engaging with a child or family member with whom one feels very close.

This is part of what being sexually well-mannered and “moral” are all about – figuring out how to channel one’s erotic surges and sexual desires appropriately and in ways that both individuals and the society as a whole will reward with positive feedback.

Comments anyone?

Sorry if it's a bit cold and analytical.

memories...

2006-11-30T09:27:00.000-05:00

When I was a freshman at the U of M in 1986/7 there was a campus fad for building "shanties" or little makeshift shacks in the outdoor student gathering place (the "Diag") at the center of the main campus. This mainly had to do with activist efforts to end South Africa's policy of Apartheid. One warm Friday night a couple of friends and I decided that we would build a "Free Charles Manson" shanty. As stupid and offensive as that might sound, we thought it was hilarious. We were in the small segment of world population who believed that Manson was a political prisoner of sorts who had been judged and sentenced not for anything he had done but rather for what he thought and, even worse, said to impressionable young people.

I kind of think the whole OJ Simpson thing is like the Manson thing turned inside out and upside down. It just sucks to me when the wrong people get punished for things. Also, I think it sucks when the rule of law allows or enables (as in the addict-in-recovery term "enabler") stupid, irresponsible behavior on the part of societies and the individuals who inhabit them.

Whatever. Go ahead and disagree with me if you like.

Here's a short documentary in three parts that I think is really very good.

part 1

part 2

part 3

Manson eloquently speaks for himself from 4:47 of part 3.

The "social Darwinists" or "satanists" could benefit from a bit of interpretation, I think...

Nikolas Schreck and Boyd Rice (personally I like Boyd better, maybe just because of his deliberately well-maintained boyish good looks) I think are awesome because they so carefully and purposefully allow (and enable) themselves to be misunderstood by those who would be predisposed to do so.

"Those who would be predisposed to do so" in my way of thinking includes not only the impressionable goth-or-neonazi-or-whatever kids (who think Boyd and Nik are saying "kill all the people we decide are assholes" or "kill all the handicapped and sickly" or "kill this or that ethnic minority" and then think "yeah, dude, that's awesome"), but also the grown-ups of the world (who think they are saying those same things but find it terrifying).

As I see it these guys (especially Boyd, from stories I've read) are two of the sweetest and most caring people you could ever hope to meet who see the world falling apart around them because of assholes who are destroying first themselves and second-through-last all the people who are stupid and ignorant enough to fall in line behind them (whether that "falling in line" looks like discipleship OR blind, reactionary, and worst of all futile "opponent-ship" - like the Democrat/Republican coin that people who know better would like to see tossed to the bottom of history's wishing well).

Their actual and heavily encrypted "point" is that some humans are really capable of wising up and taking care of business as reasonable, caring, honest women and men, and those who are not - well they're fucked and they deserve what they get. Actively, forcefully disregarding and alienating those zombies (as they see them) is just necessary for human evolution because trying to negotiate with zombies is a dead-end, if you'll excuse the pun.

And its okay that the message is heavily encoded and hidden because the self-styled "rebels" of the world who get the wrong message at first but still think it's awesome at least have a better chance of coming around to the real thing than the zombies.

AND maybe a few of the zombies will have such a blinding fit of rage in confronatation with nice-guys Schreck and Rice and others like them that the scales will fall from their eyes and they'll wake up from their trance.

Well, probably not.

Our shanty got torn down by some drunken frat boys who were edging closer to beating the crap out of us when the campus cops (who were sent to our rescue by some other, more sympathetic drunken frat boys) came to break it up. To their credit, the cops didn't taser us for thinking bad thoughts. They didn't care one way or the other about our "political statement" (LOL). They helped us put the shards of wood and cardboard into a dumpster and went on their way.

It takes all kinds.

"I wanted the music to destroy my body." - M. GIRA

2006-11-29T14:42:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at old SWANS videos today:

COWARD

LIKE A DRUG (SHA LA LA LA)

BEAUTIFUL CHILD

and a short doc from years later with a mix of performance and interview stuff with Michael Gira:

This is another one of the bands that made me who I am today. I think I've spent some time in my life in different kinds of self-denial. I had almost forgotten how much I LOVE this music or performance art or whatever you might want to call it. I still have a bunch of SWANS stuff on vinyl records, and had pretty much stopped listening to them by the time they started putting out CDs (if you want to know how long ago I was really into them).

For me this kind of shit absolutely defines artistic integrity. SWANS were awesome and beautiful to me. I'm sorry I never got to see/feel them live, but seeing Neubauten and Crash Worship several times each probably makes up for it a little bit at least.

When I was dancing on stage wearing nothing but pieces of raw butcher shop meat (usually puchased from the now long gone butcher shop on Michigan Ave in downtown Ypsilanti) strapped to my groin I was feeling the SWANS music that had damaged my hearing in the preceeding months even if the band playing behind me (Captain Dave and the Psychedelic Lounge Cats) sounded like the Butthole Surfers playing Sergio Mendes (or was that the other way around?).

The internet is a great tool for helping the packrat scrapbooker in all of us keep our closets and basements a little cleaner while still remembering where we came from.

A Little History

2006-11-29T08:52:00.000-05:00

I think my blog here might turn into "what I found on YouTube today."

Yesterday I found this interesting interview with a formative influence from my late teens:

I guess in the intervening years since I saw Psychic TV perform in Detroit and subsequently became less interested in them - which is something that used to happen to me when I would finally get to see performers that I'd anxiously waited years to see - this Genesis P-Orridge guy went and got a partial sex change operation. This is evidenced more exlicitly at the end of this video:

It's in Castilian Spanish (I think), which will make it hard even for those who speak American Spanish to understand, but the images combine to create a pretty great rapid-fire history of GPO's career in various projects over the last 30ish years.

The "subsequently became less interested in them" phenomenon I mention above has, fortunately, not been happening so much recently, and has even started to go in reverse in some cases. I hadn't really heard much BECK at all until I saw him do an acoustic show at the Michigan Theater a few years ago and I've been an avid fan ever since. I also started to listen to THE PILLOWS even more fervently in the wake of seeing them play at Anime Central in Chicago about a year and a half ago.

Anyway, the Cornelius video way down at the bottom of the scroll bar is back up (not that anyone noticed it was down) and it's awesome, especially if you're into experimental manga.

More to come...

War on Terror ≠ WWII Part 2

2006-11-28T10:18:00.000-05:00

Please understand this: The Bush administration and those who support it believe that the Iraq war and the war on terror are parallel to World War Two from every significant viewpoint. For them, the fate of the world hangs in the balance, so going to extremes (torture) is a necessary evil - they don't understand why anyone has a problem seeing that. For them "bad news" de-moralises the troops and causes them to lose their resolve, while at the same time rallying the enemy (our bad news is their good) and encouraging them to think that they are winning. So rigidly controlling the language of the war is necessary for them ("not a civil war"). Secrecy is also rigidly necessary because the enemy will use whatever they can find out to kill our soldiers and our citizens. The Bush administration and its supporters don't understand why US journalists and citizens want information other than "trust us, we are keeping you safe."

The biggest problem with all this is that the world has changed alot since World War Two. For most people this is probably a no-brainer. For anyone else I'll list just a handful of big changes that make a huge difference in the way war works in the 21st century. 1) Global access to computers and the internet makes information flow very quickly and with little restriction. 2) For those who do not have internet access there are cell phones, which are as popular in virtually every corner of the globe as the are in the US, if not even more so. 3) 24 hour cable/satellite TV news. 4) Newspapers and magazines have the above sources to compete with so compete they do, bringing their own revelations of information to the table. 5) Universal access to powerful weapons and weapon-making technology and information make "the most powerful military in the world" less powerful than it once was. 6) Many nations have lived through, and remember occupations by colonial powers - and they won't just sit down for it again. There is not enough unoccupied territory on the planet anymore for them to move somewhere else. And they're tired of being pushed around - especially in geographical areas that already got brutalized by the post-WWII Allied (which then became colonial) Powers. People and Nations have always wanted to control their own destinies - now more than ever. 7) The fact that individual people all over the world fly to different countries every single day and see how other people live and hear how other people think and share information face to face and bring all this back home with them makes it utterly impossible to successfully hide significant information about people in other countries much less to successfully demonize the population of an entire nation or religion (as was done quite successfully during WWII in the absence of communication resources and technologies available today).

My reason for bringing this up is that those of us who are opposed specifically to the war in Iraq and more generally to the way the war on terror is being fought seem to have difficulty understanding why Bush and his supporters do what they do. No one needs to come up with any devious or conspiratorial theories that demonize Bush and his supporters. As true as some of these theories may turn out to be, they are fundamentally unnecessary. And worse they muddy the rhetorical/political waters by providing Bush and his supporters with endless straw men to attack. If we who oppose these wars could turn to addressing the actual terms with which Bush and his supporters have and want to continue to frame these wars, then we would be able to bring to light their flawed, outdated thinking in a way that has no escape valve of "plausible deniability" or "passing the buck." If they won't make their governance transparent, then we must - and we must do it all the way down to the ideological underpinnings I've outlined above. When we refuse to see inside the minds of Bush and his supporters and when we demonize them or falsely label them idiots, we do so at our own peril because they feel their ideology in their hearts and it patterns the thoughts they have. The ideology of Bush and his supporters truly has divided this nation and set a large part of the world against us and if we hope to change that we will first have to work to reveal the false premises on which their ideology is based. The War on Terror and the War in Iraq DO NOT PARALLEL World War Two in any meaningful way. Pass it on...

update:

Apparently administration denials of their belief that the WWII parallels underlie their tactics have begun. This is quite confusing to me and seems to amount to shooting themselves in the foot in terms of maintaining what little support they have for their wars. Perhaps they will dredge up the whole "this is an enemy unlike any we have ever seen before" line, but then that would, on the surface at least, appear to require resorting to actual study and reseach and intelligence gathering (as opposed making stuff up and 'stovepiping' intelligence) to successfully do battle with this enemy.

New Cornelius!

2006-11-27T15:56:00.000-05:00

I just found out today that Cornelius (aka Oyamada Keigo) has a new CD for the first time in years. It's not available domestically in the US (so if anyone can hook me up with a download link...), but there are some great new videos to enjoy no matter where you live: