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July 11th, 2009
11:37 pm - Weather Bad
I was an idiot. Should have slept over. Traffic not moving. Everyone else, stay put. Posted via LiveJournal.app.
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July 7th, 2009
09:05 pm
I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention the weekend. Friday was an excellent Princeton crawl, with great weather, good Japanese for lunch, a fun time at the toy store, perfect timing in getting to The Bent Spoon ( best ice cream ). Figured that would be the highlight of the week, then a friend invited us to join him for fireworks on Saturday.
The company was good, our kind of geeks. I ended up spending a ton of time chatting with a girl who knew far more about string theory than I; brilliant chick. She was still in high school, made me feel old. She has a website with instructions on how to build a cyclotron and knew our master of ceremonies through a shared interest; the Tesla coil.
Yeah, a Tesla coil. Here it is lit up later in the evening.
I thought throwing obscene amounts of electricity about was the fireworks show, and indeed it was. But not all of it.
After marshalling that much juice, it only seemed proper to have a graphic demonstration of destructive force. The following is an animated image. It's what happens when you pump 30,000 amps through watermelon.
Three innocent fruits met their end this way, all with concussive force. Best firecrackers, ever.
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June 21st, 2009
06:59 pm - Doing the Books and Books
Thinking of moving or just budgeting? The "Living Wage Calculator", with the cheery title of "Poverty in America", is quite interesting: http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/
In other news, I was recently looking for some clip art for a portcullis. Yes, my googling is so facinating. I wanted a logo for a X11 screen locker I'd written ( also exciting ). I'll post the source for that if I ever get around to figuring out the GNOME hook part and how I want to do it.
I also looked up halberd, thinking of crossed pole arms. Halberd didn't work to well, but the results were expected. Glaive. Remember that was the name of uber shuriken in Krull? Yeah, the name is quite popular in fantasy. Same with polearm. Spear was ambiguous at best, but when I typed it, I also saw "spears" was a more popular option. Without thinking I typed spears and was immediately bombarded with a montage of naked flesh.
I told you that to tell you this. In my search I chanced up the Gutenberg Project's edition of The Handbook to English Heraldry. I was amazed that all the images were also included in the edition. Ages ago it was just ascii. This is old news, but it was news to me.
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April 16th, 2009
07:29 pm - It's only a dream... what?
"A lucid dream, also known as conscious dream, is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that they are dreaming. When the dreamer is lucid, they can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can be extremely real and vivid depending on a person's level of self-awareness during the lucid dream." -- wikipedia.
I don't really get the full dream experience that often. I can count on one hand the number of satisfying lucid dreams I've had. It's an odd balancing act. If you're too aware, you jump right out. If you're a little less aware than that, you end up shifting to a day dream kind of state where it's more vivid imagining.
The best is when the dreaming part of your brain is still going on with the show and your awareness of it isn't really interfering with the script. Then you get to ride along, editing bits according to whim. Or just play in the VR environment. Eventually the awareness seems to overwhelm the thing and out you go.
The way you get a lucid dream is to somehow notice you're dreaming. There are all kinds of ways to do thing, lots of flaky books and techniques. I'm honestly too lazy for any of it. I know it's possible, that's enough for the rare amusement.
So I'm in deep, paralytic REM sleep; the best kind for this sort of thing. I don't recall all the details, a turned corner, a room, a dentist chair, I'm in a giant dome tent, still in a building. You know, dream logic. Keeping in mind, the absurdity of dreams isn't enough to make you aware of them. For some reason, I really have to relieve myself. A corner of the tent calls to me. No, I didn't wet the bed.
But as I'm being relieved, I start to worry about what I'm doing. This is simply something I'd never do in real life. Why am I doing such a crass thing? What am I thinking... and poof, I realize it's ok because it's a dream and I'm lucid. Whee, I'm lucid and so deep that the realization didn't bring me out. I start to look around. Is that a dog? What's with the tent? Should I just dive out the window and fly somewhere? ... did I wet the bed? Too late to worry. Can't help worrying. Dammit!
I can't even feel my body. I pull out of dream state as if surfacing from under ground. Everything is fine and I've lost the dream.
This little bit of nocturnal strangeness has haunted me all day. Sorry if it was too scatological, I would have left that out if possible.
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April 7th, 2009
09:15 pm - Chain Resturants
I'll admit it, I occasionally patronize those big chain restaurants. Many of them don't stuck, but whole lot of them seem to be coasting and hoping the bar will lubricate the lameness. Maybe they're right, but I don't drink at such places.
I know when they have a microwave and they always have a deep fryer. Chances are, the best the place has to offer sees the deep fryer, but if it just misses the nuker I consider myself ahead. Based on the first rule, appetizers are usually the most satisfying. With this in mind, a few good appetizers and a small entree work pretty well for the Friday's genre eatery.
Today I saw such a amazing fail I had to share. It wasn't that the food was bad ( in this instance ), but the cunning method of cutting corners was so absurd. The victim of the fail? French Onion Soup. The criminal: Appelbee's.
French onion soup is usually pretty safe to order. It's popular, real easy to make, and so much cheaper to do so that even the nuker-rants often have some "from scratch" in it. Caramelize some onions, a little S&P, cover with water and you're there. Sure, some beef stock would be nice, or some wine, but with just the onions it's yummy.
French onion has the bonus of using day old ( or older ) bread. And the bulk of the bowl is liquid, it's soup. Of course, it's always topped with cheese; the fun part, but also the expensive part. Which is why the chain-rant presentation is a mystery.
The "soup" was well covered with cheese. It had bread hearty enough for a thick soup with real caramelized onions at the bottom. Overall, it was quite nice, maybe even a little too thick. However, it was a paltry two inches deep! The broth might have been called a gravy on which sat onions, bread, and cheese. It really didn't have enough liquid to call itself soup. The sering container had been constructed with essentially a false solid bottom, to make it look deeper.
Strange.
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March 21st, 2009
06:36 am - Saturday Morning
Yes, it's 6AM. I've only been up for two hours...
When I was a little kid and woke up at around now, I'd go bother my parents, asking when the cartoons would be on. I would be assured that they would be on soon and, in soothing parent speak, to bloody well keep quiet until then.
The early morning was the crap. You might get weekly kids variety show rerun, like "Big Blue Marble" or Zoom. Or worst, the stop motion Davey and Goliath, which felt like it was running half speed and smelled like old people. Even the talking dog was on downers. If this was meant to instill virtuous Christian values in my child self all it did was vaguely creep me out.
Ultimately the toons would fire up. Production values were generally poor. So much so that thirty year old bugs reruns were often preferable to the new stuff. It would be years before the Japanese would take over, raising the quality of the jovial jerky sketches. In a strange way, Hanna-Barbera was American cartoon innocence.
I didn't care my sketchy entertainers were a little rough around the edges, they were TV for me. I liked the shark that did three stooges impressions. And the loud sack of hair that was supposed to be a cave man. There was an armored hippo that shot pop rocks out of it's head. A number of things that would have made much more sense if I knew what marijuana was. Of course, ancient Warner Bros fare, fresh from the forties with cultural references I couldn't hope to understand. For a three to four hour block on Saturday mornings, there was a shared kid experience.
That shared experience is dead now. Inevitably steamrolled by feeds of kid friendly crap 24/7. So much so that the networks have forgotten what "Saturday Morning" used to mean. It's kind of sad.
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March 7th, 2009
07:18 pm - Watchmen: no spoilers, but warning
First, a bit the history. Watchmen is a strange comic. It's more a character study than a narrative. Though the characters are "masked heroes," it really doesn't have a lot of good super hero action. It's a combination of some seriously angsty existential ruminance and a lot of homage to a comic vigilante genre of ages past. Any pretense to plot is incidental and, to be perfectly honest, the ending is exceptionally absurd.
Forward to the movie.
The movie is very true to the comic. The ending is marginally different; slightly less absurd, but only slightly. The casting is wonderful. The look and mood is spot on; sort of. While the sound track is amusing, it's applied with the subtlety of a fire alarm. "Watchtower" is laughable. There is an needlessly graphic sex scene played against the shameless background of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Then again, it might have helped...
Violence. There is a lot of good violence in the comic and no drop of blood was missed in the on screen translation. In anything, the graphic violence is as graphic as possible. e.g. if a bone can be broken, it must be a compound green stick with arterial spray. Subtlety is not a strength, as in most cases implied damage would have been enough, or even better because it would be less of a distraction.
This kind of thing succeeds based on choice of editing the source material. I didn't generally like the choices. I honestly don't know if anyone unfamiliar the comic would be happy or even have a clue as to what they're on about.
To end on a happy note. If you are into the comic and don't mind some horror movie style gore, awkward sex, and a lot of blue CGI penises, this is kind of fun. There are a lot of visual cookies. I don't really know if I could recommend it to anyone other that a comic geek, though.
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February 14th, 2009
12:40 pm - Still Alive
In fact:
Um, yeah, that's me. I need a nap.
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January 18th, 2009
07:42 pm - When lots of other authors write your material...
I've been having some unchristian thoughts. This is actually ok, since I'm not a Christian, but I still feel kind of bad.
Jesus seemed like a sincere fellow. A Jewish protestant, looking to make his religion more accepting, trying to describe a God that was less of a sadistic megalomaniac than the Torah version. He must have pissed a lot of people off. I can respect that.
In spite of trying to fix things for the better, the New Testament is not without issue. It's good there are a lot of authors telling the same story, because then the reader can pick and choose the version they like. Or have it chosen for them. So why is the version that comes through often so exclusionary? So mixed? So antithetical to the original message?
Today, I had an epiphany. You see, the New Testament didn't get written until after the main character had passed on. In some cases, really long since he'd gone, like over a century. Some debate that some books were penned a close to his death, but many indications are that this wasn't the case.
So what is the New Testament? A document consisting of many different works, in some cases by authors that had little or nothing to do with the source material. With untold numbers of contributions never being even accepted as cannon, except by a small, devout following. Only one conclusion can be made; the New Testament is fanfic!
Somehow, it all makes so much more sense now. Did the Gnostics write slash fic? Probably...
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December 30th, 2008
09:25 am - That's just the quicky mart before dawn, I reckon...
This morning I woke up way too early. I actually felt part of the pressure headache hit, like an icepick sliding in just above the left eye brow. And with the pain came the remembrance that the plant lunch truck would not be on site to service me with life giving caffeine. Damn.
The place I usually get gas has a respectable quicky mart that I usually don't visit because, well, I'm getting gas. I didn't need gas, I needed liquid stimulants, so I braved the mart. I know I looked like an idiot with an armful of drinks, Monsters and max, Mt Dew for a slow burn and water to take the edge off. I dropped my booty in front of the cash out guy and barely noticed him, I'd been distracted by something shiny.
Well, actually, it was round and doughy and somewhat bagel like. A bagel sounded real good.
They guy acknowledged me with some kind semi rhetorical question like "how's it going". "Well, it's a little early," I said and got no response. I immediately realized than even though it wasn't even 5:30 this guy had probably been there for hours and was simply unimpressed. Right, small talk before sun rise is usually bad.
The guy then said something about "new year soon, hope it's better than the last one..." and some other small talky stuff as he rung up my java juice.
"I bet you say that every year," I said brightly, and he was off.
"Yeah, I guess so. Always seems that way. No, wait, there was this one year..." I wasn't really paying attention, trying to find a winning bagel from the basket. The first one had a meaningless sharpy mark that looked like an L. Lox? Ewww. No, there were lots of sharpy Bs. The L and a few of it's cousins must be Cs. If C was cream cheese then it looked a little parsimonious. I like more that a mere schmere when it comes to cream cheese. I settled on a safe looking B.
I put it one the counter, still only half listening to the on going analysis of years gone by, when I hear this gem. "It's a B. B and C. B is fer butter, C is fer cream cheese. They're different. Yes, B and C are different things. Not the same at all. Not at all." There was no irony in the tone, only grave commentary, as my "B" was studied and tallied. For just a second, I thought I was an extra in the delete scenes of Forest Gump.
For the first time I really studied my check out guy. He was a white guy with a weathered face, could be in his 50s or 60s. The face was covered in what looked like two days worth of salt and pepper stubble. He was lean with a head that seemed stuck, cocked to the side, under a washed out ball cap. He looked like he would be more at home behind a John Deere than a quicky mart counter.
He gave back my change, now talking on to no one in particular about New Year's and parties, but some people don't go to parties, oh no... I realized I'd just purchased breakfast from Slingblade! For some reason this amused me greatly and I wished Billy Bob a good day, though I couldn't tell for sure if he heard or cared.
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December 25th, 2008
09:35 pm
Yesterday, as I wandered around the bookstore, admiring a magazine cover the features Watchmen characters and the re release of the graphic novel in the front of the store, courts were ruling that I couldn't see the movie!
Who owns rights the Watchmen has been a story as strange and convoluted of that of the work itself. One can only hope this will draw some attention to just how fubar the copyright system has become.
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December 13th, 2008
03:45 pm - Van Gogh and The A-Team
Seen the show Leverage with Timothy Hutton? It's rather fun. Actually, it's the A-Team!
You have the two classics, Hannibal, the plan man, disillusioned drunk, played by Hutton. The face man is a woman; can't complain. The muscle is a pretty boy that looks like he's related to the Baldwins; he's the other half of the A-Team face character, somewhat impish. The other half of the Mr. T character is a modern computer geek who's atypical in that he seems to be the most together character. The last character is a female cat burglar that they don't seem to know how to write for yet, but holds up a little of the Murdoc crazy.
More white collar, less dead cars and bullets, still the A-Team. Maybe a little mission impossible. Not blow your socks off but entertaining.
Anyway, I just had one of those WTF moments watching the second episode. They're gathering together the troops and the thief is stealing a work of art in "Monaco". It looks like a Van Gogh. Having seen the MoMa exhibit yesterday, I do a double take. The painting that gets stolen is one of those things with a "Cypress" in it. But the one the guard is standing next to is "The Night Cafe". I'd been standing as close at the guard to the original the day before. It was an odd feeling, kind of cool.
I don't much care for Van Gogh, but I found his early stuff fascinating. You know, before he discovered blue, red, and yellow running together in a gaudy mess was where it was at. I thought his night paintings and peasant studies had a lot more soul.
The exhibit was crowded, in spite of limited entry. Perhaps because it was special, but I suspect because it had celebrity. People want to see in person things they've seen in books or heard about. And if it's "special" then they can somehow feel special.
Modern art never really did it for me so much. I have a sense of watching an empire in decline, the truly artistic souls drifting away from the craft, leaving room for more and more hacks. My favorite painting was probably The Storm, by Edvard Munch, because it evoked honest feeling other than the disdain I felt for so much of the exhibits.
There was a display with two huge walls being blasted by images and the space begin flooded by really bad mood music. There was a big comfortable looking couch ring where people could gather and essentially become part of the display. It was clever, but it made me think of the euthanasia room in Soylent Green.
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December 6th, 2008
09:20 pm - Because I don't post enough and it's better than doing work
| Which creature of the night are you? Your Result: Werewolf You are a vicious fighter and a vicious lover, absolutely dedicated to your pack. You are pushed to anger by disloyalty and injustice and have a tendency toward sudden, periodic bursts of wild behavior. | | Demon | | | Cthulu Spawn | | | Ghost | | | Sorceror | | | Incubus/Succubus | | | Vampire | | Which creature of the night are you?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
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November 21st, 2008
03:58 pm - Bump
I don't have bumper stickers on my car. But I'd consider this one:
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October 19th, 2008
07:57 pm - Event, survived, fire, fire, fire
By popular demand, I just posted the noodle recipe from last night.
My only regret is that I didn't make more. People came back looking for seconds on a number of things, but noodles seemed to be the winner of "we want more." I'm sure I looked like hell towards the end there, but I'd hit stride and could have done another box. We served a little over four pounds of dry noodles, which is over eight pounds cooked, to ten tables. So about a pound a table.
For future cooks, twice that would have been good. Though, if a table had someone like me, you could probable double that again. I love noodles. I particularly enjoy the recipe I served. I've eaten variants it for most of the past week and I'm still not tired of it. ( Even though some variants turned out terrible. )
Post event observations. Double burner with non stick pan, good. Giant flaming wok of doom, bad. Yes, I made the big fire. Olive oil, even the refined stuff, didn't give me enough of a window between empty and full. The result was a grease fire that actually seemed to be able survive in the absence of oxygen. Jaji was quicker on the uptake than I and handled my pyrotechnic proclivities with such panache that some people thought it was part of the show.
In the aftermath was a smell. I heard people talking about it, some didn't know what it was. Someone said propane smells awful. Those poor people. I didn't know whether to be happy or sad that they didn't recognize the distinctive smell of truly torched olive oil, broken irreparably into a kind of polymerized mustard gas. Then again, I know people who think that's what Italian kitchens are supposed to smell like...
I'll try to post info on the chick pea flat bread we made. I really don't think it was great, but I thought it was pleasant enough. I could have made it better, but I was leery of adding in anything that might put off our audience. To be honest, that one was dropped on me with zero test kitchen time; I didn't know I'd be doing it. ( I was focused on noodles. ) If it comes up again, they should be much better.
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07:46 pm - Recipe: Stir Fry Noodles
Basic Recipe
( Be sure to read all the notes, these are real easy to screw up. )
You will need: thin wheat noodles, oil, soy sauce, a non stick fry pan, a pot in which to boil water and noodles, water, tongs.
Start water warming, you want it boiling, and start warming fry pan, hotter is better. Combine half soy sauce, half water in a container that you will be able to quickly pour over noodles. Oil should also be ready to be poured. When water is boiling, take a deep breath, get ready. Place a serving of noodles in the boiling water.
The noodles should only stay in the water until they've become just soft. This is long before al dente, we're fully cooking them in the fry pan. The chinese noodles I recommend will take just about a minute to get to this state, depending on how much adding the noodles to the water dropped the temperature.
This next step needs to be done quickly. Put oil in the hot pan, using tongs immediately transfer noodles from water to pan and move noodles around pan quickly to coat with oil. If you do this slowly, the oil can burn or some of the noodles may stick. Once your noodles are scattered about the pan, they're cooking very quickly; you don't want them to burn.
Take the soy water mixture and pour about cup over noodles. It should immediately boil up and the noodles will hungrily drink the liquid. Move the noodles around, making sure all noodles get some liquid. When liquid seems gone, repeat. Continue to move and pour liquid on noodles until they seem fully cooked. If they refuse to absorb liquid, they're close to overcooked or the pan isn't hot enough.
Little crispy bits are tasty ( though carbonized smoky bits are not. ) If you leave the noodles in one place toward the end of cooking you'll get some crispy. You're frying, don't be afraid of the crispy.
When the noodles first hit the pan they will be white in color. They should be a rich brown from both soy and fire when done. Serve hot.
With hot water and pan, the amount of time from dry noodles to finished product is about three to four minutes.
Alternate method
Moving the noodles directly from water to fry pan was a technique born of necessity and fortune. The necessity of speed and the good fortune of using a non stick pan rather than a cast iron wok. I wouldn't try the oil, splash, and scatter method without non stick.
The alternate method is to remove the noodles from the water and immediately transfer them to a bowl with oil in it and toss them to coat. From here, you can place them directly into a pan without worry ( well, less worry, noodles are sticky. ) Or, better for large scale presentations, you can put your oil coated noodles aside and fry them later. I left noodles sitting like this for over an hour with no apparent ill effects. You should be able to prepare a large quantity like this and then put on the wok show.
Notes
Starch is the enemy. It's extremely easy to get stir fry glue if you're not careful. The best way to avoid this is high heat, a balance of liquid and dryness, and don't skimp on the oil. It's doesn't have to be greasy, but every strand wants some oil, like a cold noodle salad. The alternate method with a non stick pan would give best control of oil for those concerned.
Peanut oil is the preferred grease of the wok, it has a very high heat tolerance. It's also an allergen for some. We used refined olive oil. Olive oil has a crappy smoke point, but no one is allergic to it. The refined oil is better for heat and seemed to work fine. Try the peanut oil at home, it will give a more familiar chinese food flavor.
The water sauce mixture of half soy sounds basic, but it's very tasty. Do not be tempted to use just soy sauce, it's too rich and will make the final product too salty. Using water then sauce is also bad, because the noodles will taste watery. In addition to soy, fish sauce and rice wine are good additions. Only use sesame oil as a final seasoning and only if you're familiar with how it behaves; it can overwhelm a dish.
The noodles you want for this are cheap, basic, dry noodles. They have only three ingredients, wheat, iced water, and salt. They are very thin, but not vermicelli (misua) thin. Closest to what the Japanese call somen. Italian style pasta, commonly made with semolina, will not work; it takes longer to cook and behaves differently.
For the home cook, fresh noodles are nice, or Cantonese style curly egg noodles. These are also the most expensive. Fresh noodles probably don't even need to be boiled but you'll want to rinse them in warm water, to both refresh them and also wash off some of the starch they're packed in.
Whatever you choose to use, it's easiest if the noodles still need a little move cooking before you throw them into the pan. They need to be able to take on the liquid you add to the pan, not just because it adds flavor but because the steam can help keep the noodles from sticking.
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October 12th, 2008
09:57 pm - TV Ugly
I have a strange admission; I don't believe anyone is ugly. No, not in a sappy everyone is beautiful in their own koombia kind of way. It's just that I've never seen anyone with a face that didn't seem interesting, rather than unpleasant.
Of course, some faces are strikingly beautiful; most aren't. Fewer than the entertainment industry would have me believe, to be sure. One of the things I really enjoy about foreign films and TV is the multitude of average, or a least normal, looking people. I find it oddly soothing.
When you first experience this painting the reaction is probably shock, surprise, maybe even anger at the cruel artist. Strangely, the more you look at it, the more you see the compassion in it, both in the subject and the painter. It is, in spite of everything, beautiful. *
There's a new show called Eleventh Floor, it is yet another foreign rip off. The original is from the UK, staring Patrick Stuart. So I watched the UK version. It wasn't particularly engaging, but it did have a cast of normal looking blokes, sans California polish. With this in mind, I had to watch the US remake.
The US show was like the UK one on fast forward, the hour plus had been trimmed to forty or so minutes that make up a network hour. The dialog that was left in was nearly verbatim most of the time. The US had fewer characters, less well drawn. The story, being the same, was still uninspired, but the production was a lot flashier. Probably better paced, considering the weak story. And, of course, they were all very good looking people.
I also watched the UK "Life of Mars". It's quite good. I expect the US remake will be faster, flashier, and prettier. I don't really know if that's a good thing.
* for the historically inclined, some new info on "the Ugly Duchess."
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September 16th, 2008
09:54 pm - Full Circle, information for the few
As a student of the middle ages, I tend to give more than the normal amount of thought to the meaning and moment of the Renaissance. There are so many factors, it's hard to find a catalyst or even a somewhat unmoved mover. However, when it comes right down to it, I suspect it's ultimately the usual pump primer: money.
Strangely, money in the middle ages seemed to have the opposite effect it's having now. Before the concept of intellectual property there was a far more basic method for ensuring your trade secrets were yours alone to exploit. They were, well, trade secrets. And only a trusted guild member had access to them.
Of course, trusted guild members can be bribed. And exclusivity can be given exception for a large enough contribution. Ultimately, every Medici who wanted it could wear the red hat of a Cardinal. And when money has bought everything it can, it starts to look at art, and education, and anything that can make the wealthy feel they've not just caught up to the nobility, but surpassed it. And strangely, instead of holding secrets tight, there began a mad rush to uncover secrets and shout them to the world, even if no one had held them tight before.
Science is one of the results of free exchange of information. And, for a time, scientists fought for the only coin that truly mattered, bragging rights. Then, instead of simply being akin to a work of art or lofty scholarly contemplation, the fruits of empirical exploration begin to emerge at world changing speed. Scientists know what's opened the flood gates and keep the exchange of information open as well as they can.
Now money is having a cooling effect. Secrets are hard to keep, but modernly they can be guarded through litigation. And they can be made harder to access, unless you're in some particular group, or organization, or guild...
Now that information can be money, those with the purse strings are desperately trying to control it in the moder age. Today's story of ugliness the attempt to close previously open National Institutes of Health research. Science seems assailed by both Fundamentalist and Capitalists. The Church and the Nobility?
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September 9th, 2008
07:49 am - On Works from Dead Guys
In a recent conversation with someone, I tried to convince them that Shakespeare was not the dull thing they were forced to endure in school. On rereading my argument, I thought it amusing enough to share:
All the materials that make up English Literature are simply the entertainment and escapism of the day. While not all may suit our modern tastes ( I loathe Dickens ), understanding it's fundamental nature is amusement rather than academia makes it all approachable.
Hamlet is a good example. At the time, the big thing was revenge plays; what we call action movies. Basically a likable guy has family killed by bad guys and proceeds to make bad guys pay. Willy does what he always did, takes what's popular and produces his version. What he also often did was put a twist on the by then tired formula, in Hamlet's case, he's emo to the hilt.
Hamlet comes home to find daddy murdered and mommy in an incestuous affair with the killer. Rather than just killing the bugger, he waits. He sulks, he laments he inability to kill himself, oh that God had "not fixed
His canon against self-slaughter." He "pretends" to be insane. He wears black all the time.
He takes some comfort from being smarter that everyone else and insults everyone around him in language most of them don't catch. By the middle of the play, you think he might of worked himself up enough to take revenge, but stays his hand on the weak excuse that the victim is praying. Instead, he commissions a play! He even picks up a skull in a graveyard and gushes over it.
Hamlet is, among other things, the archetypal emo art fag. The entire play is basically his self flagellation. Keeping this in mind, Hamlet becomes our nouveau Donnie Darko anti hero. The play can be deeply amusing.
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September 6th, 2008
11:18 pm - Microsoft and Faux Sugar
It's been a good week for bad commercials. The first Jerry meets Bill Gates commercials has arrived. I saw it on TV without benefit forewarning. Fundamentally poor by anyone's measure, if this is the only response they can come up with to challenge Apple's ads, they've lost it more than even their strongest critics could have guessed. It's a pity, a good M$ commercial might have offered abused "I'm a PC" users some kind of bragging rights. Ain't gonna happen.
Next, the High Fructose Corn Syrup is good for you campaign.
These are actually quite clever commercials. They do a good job of making corn syrup nay sayers look like uninformed morons. "Visit our web site for the real story." This is the mistake. You see, when I ask the all knowing Google, I get this list:
Results 1 - 10 of about 985,000 for high fructose corn syrup. (0.07 seconds)
Sponsored Link
1. High Fructose Corn Syrup: HFCSFacts.com
Search Results
1. High-fructose corn syrup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. The Murky World of High-Fructose Corn Syrup
3. The Double Danger of High Fructose Corn Syrup
4. High-fructose corn syrup: Why is it so bad for me? - MayoClinic.com
5. High-Fructose Corn Syrup: Not So Sweet for the Planet ...
6. Consumers are raising cane over corn sweetener - Los Angeles Times
7. Sugar coated / We're drowning in high fructose corn syrup. Do the ...
8. How to Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup - wikiHow
9. The Seattle Times: Health: High-fructose corn syrup fueling ...
10. High Fructose Corn Syrup | Sprol
The sponsored link is what they want me to find, but the real results don't look like they're on board with the PR party line.
I suppose it's possible "The Corn Refiners Association" are unaware of The Streisand Effect, but I believe they may figure it out. Even without the web, the PR campaign begs the question, "what wrong with HFCS? What are other people saying?" It would be nice if this vaguely offensive propaganda bites them in the ass.
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