Octopodial Chrome

Cracked.com states that babies lie, racially discriminate, defy authority, get high off of masochism, steal and even murder in the womb. I think we should require registration of all babies and institute a mandatory one-week waiting period before procreation…

Chris Illuminati shares some notes his wife has left in his lunch. Very cool, and very sweet too.

In the style of Jeff Foxworthy’s hilarious You Might be a Redneck routine, here’s a list of questions to determine if you’re a straight-razor or safety-razor type of guye.

A friend challenged all of his friends to post the first fifteen movies we can think of that will stick with ’us. Well, I prefer twelve to fifteen any day, so here’s my selection:

1. Top Gun
2. Young Frankenstein
3. The Lighthorsemen
4. Breaker Morant
5. Die Fledermaus
6. Last of the Mohicans
7. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
8. 12 Monkeys
9. 90° South
10. Hors de Prix
11. Master and Commander
12. Animal House

Take it for whatever it’s worth…

So I was watching the video for Jefferson Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now and had an idea: a cheesy 80s film night. This isn’t for the true classics like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; it’s for the guilty pleasures like Top Gun, Adventures in Babysitting or Mannequin. Probably Weird Science, Real Genius and Revenge of the Nerds. Maybe License to Drive or Blind Date. I wonder what others would qualify? I’ve never seen Footloose, but it sounds like a likely candidate. Ditto on both counts for Dirty Dancing.

Anyone else have thoughts? There are probably too many for a single night, but a whole series of Cheesy 80s Film Nights sounds fun to me.

Behold the fundamental building blocks of awesome. It’s all there, from the basis of all awesome—bacon—through beer, to sausage, to ninjas, Chuck Norris, grenades and trilobites (my favourite fossil).

Me, I think if we can get our top scientists working on combining whiskey (distilled beer), aliens, a catapult, three motorcycles and Samuel L. Jackson with a mohawk then we might possibly transcend the awesome continuum and usher in the Age of Awesomosity. Or something.

A popular note going around Facebook requests that one list…

…[fifteen] albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

Well, I don’t know if I’ll reach fifteen, but here are my picks:

Nevermind (Nirvana)

If you were alive in 1991, you know what I mean. With one album—really, one song—what I thought I knew about music was turned completely on its head. It was revolutionary, and it was well-done, unlike so much of the grunge which would follow (Pearl Jam, I’m looking at you).

Use Your Illusion I & II (Guns N’ Roses)

I didn’t really know a lot about GnR at the time, but I understood from the news that Use Your Illusion was a highly-anticipated release. My buddies and I could watch video for November Rain over and over and over (due in no small part to Axl Rose’s then-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour’s role therein) and loved that great guitar solo (it still gives me goosebumps), and I remember spending hours trying to hold the final note of Don’t Cry for as long as possible.

Cooleyhighharmony (Boyz II Men)

Another album that came out in 1991 (I was thirteen then—see a pattern?), the absurdly long-titled It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday seemed very meaningful at the time. I’ve grown up since, but those were good times then.

Top Gun, the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

I’ve written about Top Gun before; suffice it to say that it’s one of my all-time favourite films. The soundtrack itself is magnificent: from Kenny Loggins’s Danger Zone to Berlin’s Take My Breath Away to the Top Gun Anthem, it’s superb. There are only a few lame tracks, but the vast majority are grand. If you don’t like Top Gun you’re a commie, and if you don’t like the soundtrack you’re deaf. It’s that simple.

Different Class (Pulp)

This one came out before I entered college, but I didn’t discover it until after I’d graduated. I was still fairly young, living in my first apartment and used to visit a CD store within walking distance every few weeks. I found Different Class one day and played it near-constantly. Had it been vinyl, I’m sure I would have worn the grooves thin. As it was, I managed to discover Britpop nearly a decade late. Better late than never!

slowdrown (Dim Reflection)

This was the first album I bought that featured friends or acquaintances of mine. Now known as The Farstar, Dim Reflection were a pretty damned good band that my buddy Shannon put together in college.

Are You with Me? (Cowboy Mouth)

My junior year of college I decided not to go home for spring break and instead spent it hanging out with my buddy Phil and his girlfriend Jess. We played golf, ate out, went shooting, bought canes and bowler hats, got hit by a car on a freeway exit—and through it all, this tape was playing in the cassette player. It became the soundtrack for one of the best weeks I’d had up until that point. To this all I need is to hear the first few notes of Jenny Says and I’m in vacation mode.

The ’80s Hit(s) Back!)

I’m not certain, but I believe this is the first CD I ever bought in college. It was a simple compilation, but I played it and played it my freshman year. Good stuff and good times.

The Best of Bond…James Bond

In the fall of 2002 I returned to London for a weeklong vacation; on the way over and back British Airways had this CD playing on one its channels. The trip itself was a bit of a washout—I discovered that it’s always better to travel with people—but as soon as I got home I bought the CD and I’ve never looked back. As a small boy I imagined that I looked like James Bond whenever I wore a bow tie (my mother says I looked more like Barney Fife) and rather expected that I’d spend my adult life wearing tuxedos, drinking martinis, driving fast cars, playing with cool gadgets and chasing exotic double-entendre–spouting women. Those dreams might have been disappointed, but this CD never lets me down.

Get a Grip (Ærosmith)

Ærosmith is one of those bands whose lives are pitiable, but whose music is just spectacular. Ironically, I’ve never owned Get a Grip, but Cryin’ (which launched Alicia Silverstone’s brief career) and Crazy were huge favourites in my early teens in Virginia, while Amazing was constantly on the jukebox while I was at an engineering program shortly after moving to Denver. Steven Tyler, Joe Perry and the rest have done a lot of things they should be ashamed of, but they sure did make some great rock & roll.

Well, that’s nine, and I honestly can’t think of any more so I’ll stop here. Besides, nine is so much more pleasant a number than fifteen anyway.

Here’s some cool trivia about The Princess Bride, one of my favourite films of all time. I mean, it has swords, monsters, freaks and a hot babe—how could it get any better?

Reason has another great feature: a documentary about Hollywood’s sick love affair with Che Guevara. Guevara was a murderer who opposed the very sort of artists and musicians who now idolise him.

It’s considered cute and trendy to celebrate Communists like Guevara, Mao and Lenin—and yet they were responsible for more death and history than the deservedly-condemned Hitler!

A few months ago I bought a T-shirt with Che Guevara's image atop the legend Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Heh heh heh.

The Virtual Ranger has a great comparison of National Geographic and BBC nature specials. The National Geographic version is staged, hyper-active, short-attention-span-oriented, not terribly interesting and only marginally educational. The BBC version is thought-provoking and designed to encourage the viewer to think in a methodical fashion.

We need less of the former and more of the latter.

Here’s a nice takedown of the BOSE Acoustimass system. The short version: save your money and spend less on a better product from a reputable company.

Desmond Warzel applies the Wikipedian ethos to time travel. Hilarious if you’ve ever worked with Wikipedia much; I suspect it’s utterly unintelligible otherwise.

Here’s a cute little webcomic with a deeper message. If you’re gonna go down anyway, you might as well go down fighting…

I was watching Song of the Thing Man and found this great little bit of dialogue:

Nick

Darling, let’s go home.

Nora

Why, what’s at home?

Nick

You, my pipe, my slippers…

Nora

Nicky, I think you’re slipping!

Nick

Give me my pipe, my slippers and a beautiful woman…and you can have my pipe and slippers!

Heh heh.

Cluster ballooning is tying oneself to large numbers of helium balloons and flying therewith. This looks so fun.

From the Joy of Tech, Christmas past and present.

Well, I finally got around to seeing 2004’s Meet the Fockers, a sequel to the amusing Meet the Parents. My verdict? Absolutely atrocious.

What’s right with this film? Certainly not the Mr. & Doctor Focker played by Hoffman & Streisand: they are abominable people. Not Stiller’s Gaylord Focker: he’s a brainless twit, a simpleton along for the ride. Not Teri Polo’s nonentity of a fiancée (so forgettable I cannot remember her character’s name). There’s something wrong when De Niro’s paranoid, controlling CIA retiree is the most fully-realised and sympathetic character in the movie.

I think that we’re meant to like the Fockers—but they’re unlikable. Bernie Focker is a moron who has a shrine consisting of his son’s ninth- and tenth-place ribbons; he’s the sort of annoying putz who desperately needs to be punched in the face for at least half an hour. Roz Focker is, frankly, a disaster. She, along with her husband, has no concept of appropriateness, nor of boundaries, nor of discretion, nor of decorum, nor indeed of anything befitting civilisation whatsoever. They live in the present, ignoring the past and pretending there’s no future. The two of them have no wit, no learning; indeed, the only thing separating them from voiceless beasts is their incessant speaking. My world would have been a better place had I never been introduced to them.

Indeed, I would have been a happier man had I never seen this film. If it were possible to induce amnesia, I would. I am poorer and dumber for having seen it. May God have mercy upon my soul.

Mil Millington (of the profoundly popular Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About) has released his forty-fourth web vignette. Reading his stuff makes me rather glad to be single—and when you read it, you’ll see why. The green? They don’t sell them in green.

…or have one hell of a personality.

Traveller 5 is almost out, and a CD-ROM is now available with rulebooks and data. Looks to be pretty cool.

Raymond Ibrahim tears apart the new anti-Christian Beowulf film. I’ve no desire to see this latest mishandling of the classic.

Unsurprisingly, Star Drek is guilty of almost every single one. Roddenberry set sci-fi entertainment back a century.

Wil Wheaton reviews Start Trek: The Next Generation episodes. What makes this notable is that Wheaton was a regular actor on Star Trek. He’s not afraid to point out how absurd the writing could be, but is also willing to give the show what (little, IMHO) credit it deserves in places. Really cool stuff.

The first trailer for Prince Caspian has been released. My only quibbles are that Caspian has a goofy accent and looks too old for the part, and that I am getting sick and tired of mask helmets. People, you want a helmet to deflect blows, not grab them.