Personal Blog – Page 7

The Unfortunate Pot Roast

I had to go on site yesterday for a new project. I went from being an independant to being an employee and now I get talked to as if I were an employee.Which I am,I suppose… But I haven’t felt that particular you are an employee vibe for such a long time. I don’t really care for it to tell you the truth.

There seemed to be a bit of discord at the end of my time at the location.I sent an email apologizing if I was the cause. I really do not want to get fired from this project. Unfortunately, if I get do fired from this project I will have purchased a mac(the project required it,sort of but that is another post) and logged over 60 hours of research,meetings,and actual design work.

Stinky Roast
For our dinner last night I cooked a roast that was “off”. Not quite spoiled but not very nice at all.We threw it out and ate the side dishes.

Dan in Real Life

I was asked to create an advice column type of website recently so in the interest of research I rented Dan in Real Life without knowing much more about the plot than that the Dad (Steve Carell) is an advice columnist.Personally I feel that Steve Carell’s best role ever was in Anchorman.I’d prefer it if he stuck to roles that have him bellowing non sequiturs like “I love lamp”. He is an artist of the absurd and he should embrace this about himself. It worked for Bill Murray and now look at him. I got equally queasy when Jim Carrey went the dramatic route and I still refuse to like him when he is being serious.We have enough serious actors.

My biggest problem with ye old plot was that it was stupid.The writers must have assumed that we would not mind a father of 3 acting like a 12 year old.They probably think that our level of maturity hovers around the 12 year old mark,too.

Total Spoiler
Dan, while home for the holidays, meets a woman in a bookstore, ends up talking to her for hours and then goes back to the family home to find out this woman is his brother’s(Dane Cook,troublesome casting choice) new girlfriend and he is crazy about her.The woman, “Marie”(Juliette Binoche,love love) has fallen for Dan but she is in this new relationship with his brother and is determined to be realistic or at the very least,polite. Dan can’t stand her grown up choice and acts like a complete twit about it. It’s like Geez, you knew her for 3 hours,dude,relax.
Following the formula of boy meets girl, girl is boy’s brother’s girlfriend, boy loses girl, boy gets girl in the end,thank you Hollywood.

Avoid this movie

Trouble Every Day

The plot is the kind of maddening, meandering crap that makes you want to kick something.
Vincent Gallo,the lead, does a lot of staring in this movie.Everyone in this movie does a lot of staring.I suppose director Claire Denis thought that providing coherent dialogue to go along with all the staring would have been “too obvious” or something.
Vincent plays a honeymooning in Paris American doctor who suffers from the same affliction as his old girlfriend, a woman married to another doctor,a former colleague of Vincent’s who is trying to cure the affliction:the need to eat people and have sex with them at the same time.
The female cannibal enjoys going roaming and eating people but Vincent doesn’t.He takes pills and avoids his wife in bed and starts mooning after the French hotel maid instead.His wife copes by sleeping a lot.

The blurb on the DVD cover promised that Vincent and his former girlfriend were going to go on a bloody rampage together.But they got it wrong.The woman goes on a bloody rampage on her own but old Vincent shows up after it’s over.She lights a fire in her house,Vincent drops by for a chat and she tries to bite him but he shoves her down and she catches on fire,presumably expiring.He leaves and the dead woman’s husband walks in to the burning house.The fact that Vincent never gets to talk to this guy totally deflates the urgency built up around their meeting.The fact that Vincent seems to spend days trying to find this couple yet has about 2 minutes screen time with her is just irritating.It was the one solid plot device handed to us and it goes nowhere.Ok,she was so far gone that she wanted to screw and eat Vincent.But why could he not have had a talk with her husband?
Movies that end abruptly like this, having settled nothing plot wise,are annoying.I know they’re supposed to be artsy but it looks more like they ran out of money and had to stop filming.

I was going to use a still from the movie but I found this picture. It’s a beauty.

Please Mind Your Manners

“People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they ‘hear’ the tone they intend in their head as they write,” Epley explains.

At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. Despite this, the research subjects thought they accurately interpreted the messages nine out of 10 times.

The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren’t that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person’s perspective.
from
The Secret Cause of Flame Wars,Stephen Leahy,Wired.com

I was going to post a link to an unpleasantness in the wp-shoppingcart plugin forum but the thread was cleaned up.Which is good even if it erased my awesome answer to the flame up I got for no reason other than the guy is half a crazy pill short of punching old ladies “for looking at me funny”.

But this is the problem with forums isn’t it?

Your Basic Forum Spoilers

The Misanthrope.
This guy has no friends and is an ugly little bastard without a girlfriend.His attitude and responses are such that he could only be single and living in his Grannie’s basement.No workplace,woman or social group would put up with him in real life so he gets his kicks blasting people in an internet forum.
Republican.

The Guy Who Knows The Answer But Will Not Tell You
He just doesn’t feel like it.But he will post about why he doesn’t feel like it.And he will nitpick your spelling and or grammar.
Might also be a Republican.

The Look At Me Guy
This person, desperate for attention,9 times out of 10 will bait and flame or scold innocent parties.
If he ever does try to answer a question it’s usually just parroted information that is garbled and misspelled.He is a person of low intellect and should be avoided.The problem is he is so ubiquitous that he is hard to avoid.
He is too busy in the forums to vote.

The Parasite
The parasite also knows very little but he has buddied up to someone who seems to know everything.
Similar to the Look At Me Guy he will parrot garbled information or he will chirp “ask the Know It All Guy”. In fact,he wants to be the Know It All Guy but he is too stupid.
Too stupid to vote.

The OmG,Know It All Guy, YOu ArE A GoD Girl
This person means well but they do harm in that that puff up an already swollen head.
Might be a liberal,it’s hard to tell.

The Know It All Guy
A big fish in a small pond or rather the one person who has it all figured out and generously shares his knowledge with others,at first but soon becomes overwhelmed and may de volve into The Guy Who Knows The Answer But Will Not Tell You.Usually there can be only one Know It All Guy per forum but in larger more populated forums there are several and sometimes they fight with each other to the amusement of of silly people.
Libertarian.