Today I was chatting with one of the dealers at a desperate table ("desperate" being the casino's term for a table which has a dealer sitting on it, but no game). She'd recently had a hip replacement, and I told her about my own surgical experiences involving the extra bone growths on my legs. "Gu ci," she said, "In Chinese means Bone Thorns." Of course the Chinese term would be much more evocative than the English medical name ("multiple exostoses" or "osteochondroma" or something like that) and slightly more beautiful than "bone spur," which always makes me think of a skeleton wearing cowboy boots.
...."Thanks," I said, "Gu ci. That's great. If I learn one new Chinese word a day I'll be able to speak properly when I'm 100."
...."It's not so hard," she replies, "I used to learn 20 new words a day. Problem is now, if I learn 20 words today, I forget 25 tomorrow."
...."Yeah," I agreed. "It's the forgetting that starts to kill you."
video games do in fact make you dumb
So my co-conspirator on TA91 is hard at work on another feature film called "Half-Life." It's not completed yet, but like TA91, already has an IMDB entry, which comes with its own message board. Here are a few thread titles from that board:
"This movie has nothing to do with the game..."
"Disgrace to the game!"
"this is not the game,so the name should NOT be Half-Life."
"Everyone!! Vote this a 1! For pissing us off, fooling us....breaking our hearts, and plagerizing(name) Vote it a 1 too show your anger and love for the Half-Life video game!!"
"OMFG THE CUCKS STOLE THE CUCKING NAME OF THE ddVIDEO GAME...ONE OF THe GREATEEST OF ALL TIMES OMFG what the *beep* are youf cukign kidding m.e this is *beep* retartded. having a little azn *beep* in this movie with nothing to do with half-life. *beep* copyfright infringment myuther *beep* *beep* this *beep* movie. *beep* boycott this"
....Of course, there is not one message on the board for any of our other movies, which are all equally indie and relatively obscure, but do not share a name with a video game.
It's been a while since I hung out on a message board, and it's nice to see that there still is a a forum for idiots to come and publicly grapple with literacy. The funny thing about the Internet though, is that you never know why someone seems stupid. Maybe they're 6 and can't really type or spell yet. Maybe English is their second or third language. Or maybe video games do actually make you into a moron.
Some more gems:
"I thought this movie is finished and has been awaiting for post-production. What happened? I would think this movie might be cancelled for the year. Why not released it on DVD instead of showing it in theaters? For one thing though, I wish this movie may be re-titled "One Half-Life to Live" rather than saying "One Life to Live". It's almost enough for a soap drama." -jwtam
"When it comes to a copyrighted title, it's a question of whether or not the average consumer would confuse the one movie with the other, thus taking potential income from one copyright owner and giving it to another. In cases where there isn't likely to be any confusion of that sort, there is no copyright violation. I don't think anybody is likely to confuse some chick flick with a movie about the One Free Man. On the other hand, it IS repulsive to have the name of such an incredible game be associated with what will, no doubt, be a banal, "half-baked" movie." - bigdorkarama
"Thought that valve inc had the rights to the name "half life""... -alphadec-1
....so I'm making all these posters for about 12 years old, average. I really would like to know what's going on in their actual lives. Obviously, the game "Half-Life" is a major part of their reality. Obviously, they have bad senses of humor and reasoning skills. But they care enough to throw their "half-baked" thoughts out there. More incredibly, they feel required to defend the integrity of Valve, a fricking video game company, from "infringement" by my friend the indie filmmaker. And, although they roughly understand the concept of copyright (a major tenet of our "ownership society") they have no idea that "half-life" is a physics term, not something that Valve owns or could ever own.
Just amazing. And here's one that gets personal:
"Look at the writer/director's previous projects; there's something in there called "The Matrices". It looks like she's got plenty of experience ripping off other peoples' ideas." - genocidal monkey
YES! BECAUSE THE MATRIX IS A COMPLETELY ORIGINAL STORY. ALL KUNG-FU MOVIES, COMIC BOOKS, AND PHILIP K. DICK NOVELS, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT CAME OUT BEFORE THE MATRIX, ARE RIPPING OFF THE MATRIX. AND PARODIES SHOULD NOT EXIST. ANY PARODY THAT IS NOT "SCARY MOVIE" SHOULD BE SUED FOR INFRINGEMENT.
Honestly, I'm really tired of people not knowing that I invented the Matrix in 1993 in a rock musical that was performed in the basement of a pizza parlor. OK, so that show was seen by maybe 78 people, but the script is in the Library of Congress, for Pete's sake. So that means anything involving virtual reality and kung fu is an infringement against me, right? Geez. Maybe I should just copyright myself and the totality of my being so that people will stop bugging me, already.
"This movie has nothing to do with the game..."
"Disgrace to the game!"
"this is not the game,so the name should NOT be Half-Life."
"Everyone!! Vote this a 1! For pissing us off, fooling us....breaking our hearts, and plagerizing(name) Vote it a 1 too show your anger and love for the Half-Life video game!!"
"OMFG THE CUCKS STOLE THE CUCKING NAME OF THE ddVIDEO GAME...ONE OF THe GREATEEST OF ALL TIMES OMFG what the *beep* are youf cukign kidding m.e this is *beep* retartded. having a little azn *beep* in this movie with nothing to do with half-life. *beep* copyfright infringment myuther *beep* *beep* this *beep* movie. *beep* boycott this"
....Of course, there is not one message on the board for any of our other movies, which are all equally indie and relatively obscure, but do not share a name with a video game.
It's been a while since I hung out on a message board, and it's nice to see that there still is a a forum for idiots to come and publicly grapple with literacy. The funny thing about the Internet though, is that you never know why someone seems stupid. Maybe they're 6 and can't really type or spell yet. Maybe English is their second or third language. Or maybe video games do actually make you into a moron.
Some more gems:
"I thought this movie is finished and has been awaiting for post-production. What happened? I would think this movie might be cancelled for the year. Why not released it on DVD instead of showing it in theaters? For one thing though, I wish this movie may be re-titled "One Half-Life to Live" rather than saying "One Life to Live". It's almost enough for a soap drama." -jwtam
"When it comes to a copyrighted title, it's a question of whether or not the average consumer would confuse the one movie with the other, thus taking potential income from one copyright owner and giving it to another. In cases where there isn't likely to be any confusion of that sort, there is no copyright violation. I don't think anybody is likely to confuse some chick flick with a movie about the One Free Man. On the other hand, it IS repulsive to have the name of such an incredible game be associated with what will, no doubt, be a banal, "half-baked" movie." - bigdorkarama
"Thought that valve inc had the rights to the name "half life""... -alphadec-1
....so I'm making all these posters for about 12 years old, average. I really would like to know what's going on in their actual lives. Obviously, the game "Half-Life" is a major part of their reality. Obviously, they have bad senses of humor and reasoning skills. But they care enough to throw their "half-baked" thoughts out there. More incredibly, they feel required to defend the integrity of Valve, a fricking video game company, from "infringement" by my friend the indie filmmaker. And, although they roughly understand the concept of copyright (a major tenet of our "ownership society") they have no idea that "half-life" is a physics term, not something that Valve owns or could ever own.
Just amazing. And here's one that gets personal:
"Look at the writer/director's previous projects; there's something in there called "The Matrices". It looks like she's got plenty of experience ripping off other peoples' ideas." - genocidal monkey
YES! BECAUSE THE MATRIX IS A COMPLETELY ORIGINAL STORY. ALL KUNG-FU MOVIES, COMIC BOOKS, AND PHILIP K. DICK NOVELS, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT CAME OUT BEFORE THE MATRIX, ARE RIPPING OFF THE MATRIX. AND PARODIES SHOULD NOT EXIST. ANY PARODY THAT IS NOT "SCARY MOVIE" SHOULD BE SUED FOR INFRINGEMENT.
Honestly, I'm really tired of people not knowing that I invented the Matrix in 1993 in a rock musical that was performed in the basement of a pizza parlor. OK, so that show was seen by maybe 78 people, but the script is in the Library of Congress, for Pete's sake. So that means anything involving virtual reality and kung fu is an infringement against me, right? Geez. Maybe I should just copyright myself and the totality of my being so that people will stop bugging me, already.
sound mix completed
we finished the sound design and mix for TA91. it is freaking stupendous. now all that remains is finalizing the titles and effects shots, and then somehow doing an up-rez and color correction for final mastering. and then it will be done. and then i will have the largest beer that can be acquired within the Earth's gravitational field.
so i'm at this party
....sitting on a chair, with my feet propped up on another chair, half-intending to occupy both until my co-workers arrive, because this is the kind of party where chairs are precious, territory-establishing objects. But I'm not thinking that I'll fight for the feet-propping chair if someone else asks for it, I just want to casually comandeer it for as long as possible. Up comes this mophead hipster-looking white guy in a denim jacket. I think he may ask for the chair. What he does is makes a strange little whooping noise, point at something on the ground as if to distract my attention, and then grab the foot-propping chair away, again with a little nonsense noise like "Shwoo!" He takes the chair to another corner of the party, sets it down, and starts gabbing with his friends.
...now, I'm not one to make snap judgements about people based on their appearance, but this guy was obviously an asshole. It's one thing to be Too Cool to ask for a chair, instead making a big show of stealing it with your clever "what's-that-thing-on-the-ground" trick. It's another thing to do all that while sporting an obnoxious lead-singer-of-the-Strokes hairdo and making little comic book noises. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt if he was on drugs, but then again if that was the case, I'd figure him to have on some appropriately ironic T-shirt that said something like "I AM ON DRUGS" in pink block letters.
...I have another theory of this guy that is based completely on my brief impression. He probably doesn't know enough assholes in his personal life. There are certain people in LA who feel it's their job to act out the asshole at every social function, because they're a cool-rebel-rocker-actor-poker-player-whatever. They live in sheltered shmoozy environments where everyone's superficially civil to each other, or else dulled and jaded by the sterile isolation of modern life, etc. So they "shake things up" by acting in the style of jerks that they've seen on TV. They don't actually know any real assholes, but they are repelled by the fake niceness that permeates LA, and feel this is their way of Keeping It Real.
....This is why it's important to know some true assholes in your life. So you don't waste time posing as one to hide your own lack of character traits. Again, I could give mophead benefit of the doubt and believe that he was a genuine-article asshole who came from a whole family of abusive chair-stealing types. But I don't think so. He didn't seem to have the real sociopathy in him, merely a surface caricature of it. Like the kind of guy who responds to someone saying "Hi!" by lunging at them and screaming "Krakoa! Kraoka!" just to point out how meaningless the convention of saying Hello is. I'll assume that he's the bad boy in a pack of nice friends, and his friends all think he's hilarious.
...now, I'm not one to make snap judgements about people based on their appearance, but this guy was obviously an asshole. It's one thing to be Too Cool to ask for a chair, instead making a big show of stealing it with your clever "what's-that-thing-on-the-ground" trick. It's another thing to do all that while sporting an obnoxious lead-singer-of-the-Strokes hairdo and making little comic book noises. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt if he was on drugs, but then again if that was the case, I'd figure him to have on some appropriately ironic T-shirt that said something like "I AM ON DRUGS" in pink block letters.
...I have another theory of this guy that is based completely on my brief impression. He probably doesn't know enough assholes in his personal life. There are certain people in LA who feel it's their job to act out the asshole at every social function, because they're a cool-rebel-rocker-actor-poker-player-whatever. They live in sheltered shmoozy environments where everyone's superficially civil to each other, or else dulled and jaded by the sterile isolation of modern life, etc. So they "shake things up" by acting in the style of jerks that they've seen on TV. They don't actually know any real assholes, but they are repelled by the fake niceness that permeates LA, and feel this is their way of Keeping It Real.
....This is why it's important to know some true assholes in your life. So you don't waste time posing as one to hide your own lack of character traits. Again, I could give mophead benefit of the doubt and believe that he was a genuine-article asshole who came from a whole family of abusive chair-stealing types. But I don't think so. He didn't seem to have the real sociopathy in him, merely a surface caricature of it. Like the kind of guy who responds to someone saying "Hi!" by lunging at them and screaming "Krakoa! Kraoka!" just to point out how meaningless the convention of saying Hello is. I'll assume that he's the bad boy in a pack of nice friends, and his friends all think he's hilarious.
information & intelligence
I was surfing the blogosphere looking at articles on beef when I had an epiphany about how cheap information has become. It used to be important when I encountered a rare idea or a beautiful factoid. If I read something about the exotic mating habits of lobsters, I could put it into the mouth a character in a play to make them sound smart and inspired. The knowledge felt precious, because I had reaped the benefits from a scientists' journey to discover something obscure.
....And now? Fergetaboutit. Everyone knows a whole lot of obscure shit. I'll see your story about dog sperm with my anecdote about soy products. I read about it on the Internet. If you want the information I'll send you the link. And even though the levels of misinformation and ad-campaigns-disguised-as-information have ballooned to the point of nearly drowning out all useful knowledge on the web, the delivery systems have improved so that we now have constant, high-speed access to all this whatever. So it's easier to know, but harder than ever to care.
....And I know this to be empirically absolutely incorruptibly true, because I used to work for a search engine.
....And now? Fergetaboutit. Everyone knows a whole lot of obscure shit. I'll see your story about dog sperm with my anecdote about soy products. I read about it on the Internet. If you want the information I'll send you the link. And even though the levels of misinformation and ad-campaigns-disguised-as-information have ballooned to the point of nearly drowning out all useful knowledge on the web, the delivery systems have improved so that we now have constant, high-speed access to all this whatever. So it's easier to know, but harder than ever to care.
....And I know this to be empirically absolutely incorruptibly true, because I used to work for a search engine.
i can't help it
...a friend in high school told me once, "you need to take responsibility for your emotional state," and I know that this is true; when you feel shitty, it's useless to hope that someone or something else will take the shittiness away.
But, but, but. Sometimes someone else can make my whole day. Sometimes there's a little cerebral interaction that happens, whether it's telling a well-received joke, or sharing a communicative look, that helps revalidate my breathing of air. I feel that I can hear better, speak clearer, act truer. Sometimes the spell lasts for days, a feeling of buoyancy, a dizzy sense of hope that is every bit as imaginary as the episodes of despair, so quickly substituted.
But, but, but. Sometimes someone else can make my whole day. Sometimes there's a little cerebral interaction that happens, whether it's telling a well-received joke, or sharing a communicative look, that helps revalidate my breathing of air. I feel that I can hear better, speak clearer, act truer. Sometimes the spell lasts for days, a feeling of buoyancy, a dizzy sense of hope that is every bit as imaginary as the episodes of despair, so quickly substituted.
neural chaff neutralized
....i'm pretty sure now that it was the sleep aid, Lunesta, that I'd taken excessively last week, causing the fuzziness. That really should've been my first guess. Although on the list of possible side effects, "anxiety and depression" rank far below "liver failure," so I wasn't really anticipating it.
...I have found lately that eating peanuts before bed helps put me to sleep without calamity. Peanuts, like turkey, are apparently a natural source of tryptophan, which I believe is spelled like that.
...I have found lately that eating peanuts before bed helps put me to sleep without calamity. Peanuts, like turkey, are apparently a natural source of tryptophan, which I believe is spelled like that.
neural chaff
In issue #16 of Justice League of America (the latest version), the arch-villain Prometheus attacks Green Lantern with something he calls "neural chaff" -- a (presumably) radiated weapon that interferes with the thought process, rendering GL incapable of focusing his will and imagination to create those big green plasma shapes that are his bread-and-butter.
Something like that is going on with me lately. I'm in good health, and starting to sleep more regularly, but over the past week I've been having these weird moments where my head feels full of fuzz and I can't quite process information or focus on simple things. Or rather, doing simple things feels like much more of an accomplishment than it should.
Mind you, none of this affects the performance of my duties at work and the daily routines of life, because they are just that: routine. It bothers me, though, to feel inarticulate, unable to get words and thoughts together. My imagination and wit are my strongest attributes in this life (as opposed to say, my dazzling cheekbones) so without them I'm pretty much totally without game.
I've felt like this before, but that was back in high school and my early 20's, and seemed like normal angst at the time. Since then I've made big strides towards mental maturity and social eptitude. But lately, I have these attacks of regression.
It usually passes, but sometimes it takes hours, or a particularly intense session of attempted Sudoku-solving, to get my brain to work right again.
In the midst of these moments of fog I get anxious that I'm having some kind of nervous breakdown, but I don't think that's what's really going on. Like any good psychiatry-, Prozac- and religion-fearing introvert, I have tried to self-diagnose and have narrowed it down to a few possibilities:
a) I'm frustrated with the extremely dragged-out process of finishing TA91, and its unfinishedness is feeding a sense of lack of control over my life.
b) I'm feeling very emotional over a certain person, and my attempts to deny that emotionality due to her extreme unrequitability (if that's not a word, it should be) are causing a kind of Moebius loop in my head that interferes with my thought processes.
c) I am a completely normal 30-year-old with the same anxieties as everyone else.
d) Prometheus is attacking me with neural chaff to prevent my metamorphosis into a superhuman being.
For the sake of pure excitement, here's hoping for "d)".
Something like that is going on with me lately. I'm in good health, and starting to sleep more regularly, but over the past week I've been having these weird moments where my head feels full of fuzz and I can't quite process information or focus on simple things. Or rather, doing simple things feels like much more of an accomplishment than it should.
Mind you, none of this affects the performance of my duties at work and the daily routines of life, because they are just that: routine. It bothers me, though, to feel inarticulate, unable to get words and thoughts together. My imagination and wit are my strongest attributes in this life (as opposed to say, my dazzling cheekbones) so without them I'm pretty much totally without game.
I've felt like this before, but that was back in high school and my early 20's, and seemed like normal angst at the time. Since then I've made big strides towards mental maturity and social eptitude. But lately, I have these attacks of regression.
It usually passes, but sometimes it takes hours, or a particularly intense session of attempted Sudoku-solving, to get my brain to work right again.
In the midst of these moments of fog I get anxious that I'm having some kind of nervous breakdown, but I don't think that's what's really going on. Like any good psychiatry-, Prozac- and religion-fearing introvert, I have tried to self-diagnose and have narrowed it down to a few possibilities:
a) I'm frustrated with the extremely dragged-out process of finishing TA91, and its unfinishedness is feeding a sense of lack of control over my life.
b) I'm feeling very emotional over a certain person, and my attempts to deny that emotionality due to her extreme unrequitability (if that's not a word, it should be) are causing a kind of Moebius loop in my head that interferes with my thought processes.
c) I am a completely normal 30-year-old with the same anxieties as everyone else.
d) Prometheus is attacking me with neural chaff to prevent my metamorphosis into a superhuman being.
For the sake of pure excitement, here's hoping for "d)".
going for some kind of absolute something
I'm in a blue mood, and I'm trying to shake myself out of it, and I just thought that would be a good title for a post. Or an essay about blogging. Or a blog about consciousness. Or a poem about lint.
that Red Stripe commercial is hilarious
"You are VERY ugly." "Now you are beautiful!" "Hooray Beer!"
....That's what I'm talking about.
....That's what I'm talking about.
i.t.a.b.a.l.i.o.
....a former supervisor at the casino, now fugitive from justice, was on America's Most Wanted last Saturday night. He's suspected of killing his wife. And, for my part, I considered him one of the nice floormen.
....I saw a super-cute Japanese movie yesterday, "Linda Linda Linda," about a band of high school girls who recruit a Korean exchange student to sing the title song at the school festival, despite the fact that she doesn't speak Japanese very much good. The song they sing at the end, is, of course, awesome, and is, of course, stuck in my head, so now I have to find it, although it is not available through the usual channels, which means, already, hours wasted looking vainly through various Korean and Japanese sites looking for a downloadable mp3, and will probably end with some sort of fumbling transaction involving an overpriced import CD. It's so much work being a nerd!
....OK, we're all familiar with the awkward thing at parties where people make excuses to leave a conversation, or ignore you so they don't have to even start small talk with you. In LA there's a funny variation, where people START conversations with you With The Intention Of Walking Away Quickly. They come straight at you,...with about half of their full attention, eyes darting elsewhere, say some bullshit and then walk away like they've got something more important to do. It's like, if you were in such a hurry to get away from me why walk up to me in the first place? I'm sure someone smarter than me has given a name to this behavior, it's fairly widespread.
...I completed a final "revision" on TA91 today, and feel it has at last reached a solid state of coherent weirdness that will propel it into cult film history. If the frigging sound could get done, we'd be just about ready to ship this puppy out.
...Happy Mother's Day, not in general, but specifically to My Mom, because I know she reads this hooha.
....I saw a super-cute Japanese movie yesterday, "Linda Linda Linda," about a band of high school girls who recruit a Korean exchange student to sing the title song at the school festival, despite the fact that she doesn't speak Japanese very much good. The song they sing at the end, is, of course, awesome, and is, of course, stuck in my head, so now I have to find it, although it is not available through the usual channels, which means, already, hours wasted looking vainly through various Korean and Japanese sites looking for a downloadable mp3, and will probably end with some sort of fumbling transaction involving an overpriced import CD. It's so much work being a nerd!
....OK, we're all familiar with the awkward thing at parties where people make excuses to leave a conversation, or ignore you so they don't have to even start small talk with you. In LA there's a funny variation, where people START conversations with you With The Intention Of Walking Away Quickly. They come straight at you,...with about half of their full attention, eyes darting elsewhere, say some bullshit and then walk away like they've got something more important to do. It's like, if you were in such a hurry to get away from me why walk up to me in the first place? I'm sure someone smarter than me has given a name to this behavior, it's fairly widespread.
...I completed a final "revision" on TA91 today, and feel it has at last reached a solid state of coherent weirdness that will propel it into cult film history. If the frigging sound could get done, we'd be just about ready to ship this puppy out.
...Happy Mother's Day, not in general, but specifically to My Mom, because I know she reads this hooha.
everything would be just fine if....
1) I never dreamed about work. Dreaming about work makes me feel that I am old and my imagination has decayed. Also, letting thoughts of those horrible people into my private time feels somehow like a major violation.
2) I was somehow selected to write and direct the Green Lantern movie.
3) I learned to look on the bright side; there's really a lot to recommend my current life, including a regular job, a place to live, some artistic accomplishments, ridiculously good health. If I merely focused on all the things that were Not Wrong all the time, I would be a pretty self-satisfied smiling bastard.
4) Someone would hurry up and fall in love with me.
5) I was not envious, or jealous (I get those confused). Although I realize that the grass is always greener, I still get twinges of anxiety over other people's accomplishments, possessions, charms. I'm the most envious person I know. I envy people for having crap I don't even want, and girlfriends I would never be able to stand.
6) I had an invisible force field that could protect me from harm.
7) I had another, internal, invisible force field that protected me from the side effects of drug & alcohol consumption.
8) I had a decent shotgun mic to go with my DVX100.
9) They brought back "Misfits of Science."
10) All you needed, really, in fact, and without any need for second-party validation, was love.
2) I was somehow selected to write and direct the Green Lantern movie.
3) I learned to look on the bright side; there's really a lot to recommend my current life, including a regular job, a place to live, some artistic accomplishments, ridiculously good health. If I merely focused on all the things that were Not Wrong all the time, I would be a pretty self-satisfied smiling bastard.
4) Someone would hurry up and fall in love with me.
5) I was not envious, or jealous (I get those confused). Although I realize that the grass is always greener, I still get twinges of anxiety over other people's accomplishments, possessions, charms. I'm the most envious person I know. I envy people for having crap I don't even want, and girlfriends I would never be able to stand.
6) I had an invisible force field that could protect me from harm.
7) I had another, internal, invisible force field that protected me from the side effects of drug & alcohol consumption.
8) I had a decent shotgun mic to go with my DVX100.
9) They brought back "Misfits of Science."
10) All you needed, really, in fact, and without any need for second-party validation, was love.
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