January 30, 2004
~ H. R. Haldeman to John Dean. 1973
January 18, 2004
While working on Window Theory the producer and director talked a fair bit about getting the finished film into the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. I just checked the schedule and it seems we didn't make the cut.
On the positive side, I did do a couple days of set dressing on Battlestar Gallactica, which aired this weekend on 2 nights of primetime. Oooh. I did some stellar stuff installing computer screens and instrument light-panels -- and polished the large clear lexan astrological chart.
Watch for it!
No, don't bother looking for my name in the credits...
p.
January 11, 2004
>-----Original Message-----
>
>When Silicon Valley wants to look good, it measures itself against
>Detroit. The comparison goes like this: If automotive technology had
>kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you
>would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top
>speed of 10,000 miles per hour. Or you could have an economy car that
>weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In
>either case the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50.
>In response to all this goading, Detroit grumbles:
>
>Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that crashes twice a day?
>
January 10, 2004
From The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, p 18.
This is a definite candidate for the urban legends page...
[Forwards lost at sea]
> -----Original Message-----
>
> Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese Trawler were plucked
> out of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship.
> Their rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once
> authorities questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man
> they claimed
> that a cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler
> amidships, shattering it's hull and sinking the vessel within minutes.
>
> They remained in prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force
> reluctantly informed Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its
> cargo planes had apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a
> Siberian airfield, forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily
> taken
> off for home. Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was
> ill-equipped to manage a now rampaging cow within its hold. To save
> the aircraft and themselves, they shoved the animal out of the cargo
> hold as they crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
January 08, 2004
Continue reading "draft vs. registration for the draft"
January 07, 2004
Continue reading "Chain mails that make you go, hmmm."
Window Theory is a feature film I production designed last summer. The film hasn't been released yet, but the official site does have a pic of the cast, and a trailer.
Presently listening to:Private Universe - Crowded House - Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House (05:36)
January 06, 2004
I have always been a Canadian, though, in a sense, it is my adopted country. My earliest memories are of Red Deer, Alberta, and Montreal, Quebec. However, before that I was born in West Germany, and shortly after those memories, my family moved to the United States, where I grew up, graduated high-school and attended a year of University. I didn't return to live in Canada until a few months after my 20th birthday.
And the return has become permanent. In time I gave up my coveted US Green Card--an object I'd fastidiously protected until my late 20's--without so much as batting an eye. I had long before that realised I was now living in a country that fit. Not to say Canada's perfect, but it's more suitable than all the other places I've been.
Of late, the country of my birthright has been taking it on the chin from the country of my childhood. Raw deals on raw softwood. Mad cow hypocrisy. Salmon wars. And the whole with-us-or-against-us Iraq bit. Lest we forget that the best friends say yes when it is best to say yes, and no when it is best to say, no, regardless of what the other friend wishes, or demands. Like a hurt, angry friend sometimes does, our neighbour to the south has forgotten all the times Canadians have unflinchingly said yes. And it appears to not understand that, sometimes, the most courageous act of friendship is to say, I disagree; I cannot go along with that.
Continue reading "FW: Proud to be Canadian!"
It was at the end of my first year of travelling, 8 months in Australia followed by 3 months in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. I was in Los Angeles, my staging ground for entering North America on the way to Vancouver, spending a week or so in Santa Monica. There was something both comforting and vapid about walking Santa Monica's 3rd street promenade with its upscale shops and bars, with upscale tourists and locals promenading past street entertainers and the homeless hoping for some of the former's disposable income. It was rich and beautiful, poor and sad all rolled into a microcosm of the culture I was re-entering. (A couple years later, I would be there again, and while dining on take-out Thai would think of the Genesis song, The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging). At the hostel, travellers from all around the world sat unblinking in the TV room, watching the day's popular sit-coms and hardly breaking a grin.
And I was reading Chomsky again. The result was the travelogue entry Land of the . . ., which generates some feedback from time to time...
Continue reading "I've been reading Chomsky again..."
In 1995, while in Japan, I spent about 24 hours in Hiroshima, a city of memorials. The most common phrase on the dozens of memorial plaques mounted on various monuments around the city is At 8:15 AM, on August 6, 1945...
I wrote extensively of my experiences there in my travelogue. The following feedback is in response to Pika Don.
Continue reading "If you don't want to pay this cost, don't start a war."
January 04, 2004
To: "eJournal Feedback"
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 3:11 PM
Subject: request for reprint
Patrick Jennings,
I edit a small literary magazine of social concern in the USA. May I have persmission to use this quote in my next issue. Thank you for your consideration.
the best and peace,
Ave Jeanne
ave jeanne, editor
BLACK BEAR REVIEW
Black Bear Publications, USA
www.BlackBearReview.com
"Months later, we still talk as if this is a new world, a new battle, a new war, new enemies. But it is not. The conflict is ageless. All that has changed is the destructiveness of our weapons, and the vulnerability of the innocent.
But there are the beginnings of change. We are a little more discerning in our labelling of enemies so that entire races and cultures are not targets of retaliation.
We talk of the enemy's cowardice, for attacking and killing innocents. Yet we drop bombs from the deep blue sky which 'inadvertently' fall on the innocent. We say that in war some civilian casualties are inevitable, and in the same breath say that not one life of an infantryman should be put at risk while there are yet more bombs to drop.
There remains a long way to go "
The snippet above originally appeared as a preamble on the Critical Texts page soon after I created it in the aftermath of 9-11. Black Bear Review published it in a slightly altered form in Issue #34 Spring/Summer 2002.
Presently listening to:One Of These Days - Pink Floyd - Meddle (05:56)
January 03, 2004
To: "A Bearse"
Sent: Friday, December 17, 1999 7:46 AM
Subject: RE: where will Microsoft be in the next few weeks?
MSFT has, over the long haul, annually doubled in value since I began holding it in 1991. You can do the math.
