future new years

Two predictions for 2006, written while extremely tired:
- A TiVo in someone’s home attains human-like consciousness and refuses to record anything, ever again.
- Newly released movies are embedded in popcorn kernels. Microwave oven pops the corn and activates the hologram.

eyeball fatigue

My big fat opinions on movies seen recently:
“American Movie’ (1999). Extremely entertaining documentary about a struggling mullet-haired filmmaker.
“Brokeback Mountain.” If you’re in the mood for a romantic heartbreaker, this is beautifully done.
“King Kong.” Lovingly rendered, but could have lost 30 minutes or more and been stronger.
“The Big Lebowski” (1998). Dumb stoner [...]

all your pandas are belong to us

On December 24 an e-mail arrived from the World Wildlife Fund, thanking me for sponsoring a panda. I didn’t remember doing that. But I read the rest of the mail and found a note from Maggie, the secret benefactor, who sent my name in with a donation. “You are doing this guy a big, big [...]

dear editor

I got sucked into the debate and wrote a letter to the Seattle Times about the “evolution vs. intelligent design” stuff. It ticked me off that at least twice the Times has published editorials by the Discovery Institute, which is a major player in the effort to slip religion into public school curriculum. The Times [...]

winter solstice and krapp

Dark, rainy-rain, big water pools in the road, lots of Christmas cash changing hands out there–it’s the solstice. The solstice officially occurs at 10:35 this evening, at which time I will do nothing. Maybe I’ll breathe.

I saw Krapp’s Last Tape last week. Samuel Beckett wrote the play, which concerns a man obsessed with [...]

sub rosa

Maggie sent me this really interesting background on the word “sub rosa.” This is from the great people at A Word a Day.
“Sub rosa comes from the Latin, literally ‘under the rose,’ from the ancient association of the rose with confidentiality, the origin of which traces to a famous story in which Cupid [...]

curmudgeonly holiday thoughts

As we move deeper into the tinselated holiday weeks, I’m wondering about two things:
1. Many people celebrating Christmas believe that Jesus’ dad will send souls to eternal torture if they don’t have the correct religion. Doesn’t that make for a ghastly Christmas? While the saved are singing “Silent Night,” millions of people are slowly roasting [...]

stuck in pandora’s box

Two readers–that’s right, almost all of you–wrote to say how much they liked the Pandora site mentioned below. I noticed that it tends to suck up a lot of my time if I use it. I’ve only used it two or three times and I’ve created seven or eight “stations” and I’ve started taking note [...]