a concerted blogging effort

can't say i'm not trying.

i'd like to vent a bit about how yahoo's launchcast is suddenly restricted so that you can now only listen to like 5 songs before it tells you that you are over your monthly usage limit and are directed to "my station." we all know that "my station" (not my station, but the proverbial "my station") sucks. the ratings don't really work and whenever you rate an artist high, they end up playing some random shitty song off of what is probably that artist's worst album.

anyway, i've had to rethink my at-work listening plan due to the previously cool and now lame launchcast. i listened to kcrw's simulcast until "mornings become eclectic" ended ( <3 nic harcourt and his accent, btw), and then i was going through all the pages i have bookmarked as music favorites when i rediscovered radio paradise.

although it really isn't contributing to my productivity, it is making my day a whole hell of a lot more pleasureable. sure, you can't skip, BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO, SILLY? the shins, the beatles, the pixies, jack johnson, the dandy warhols, it is allllllll goooooooood and high quality. plus it is mellow enough to listen to in your cube farm.

if you love the 80s (as i am known to on occasion) club 977 is decent as well.


this post kind of reads like a promo for the under-100-IQ set, but i can assure you that i in no way benefit from you visting/listening to these sites. the only thing i get is the pleasure of spreading the info.

(reminds me of the book you're reading, christy. care to share the name again for the enlightenment of the masses? please provide a brief synopsis/review as well. HA!)

this is the knocking song, i'm knocking on the door. knockity knock knock, knockity knock knock. knock forever more!

ok so that has nothing to do with what i'm about to write, but 10 points to whoever knows what it is from... and be specific.

anyway, i don't really have anything to say at the moment. "war of the worlds" took the wind out of my sails in terms of film criticism. plus, i'm sure you're sick of listening to me rant, so i'll spare you for now.

i'll stick to personal stuff in this post. i got a new job and gil's buying a house. i'm kinda "eh" about the job. it's in strategic planning and development and could end up to be cool or really effing boring. i'm REAAAAAAALLLLLYYYYYY hoping for cool. i've just never been very business minded. as you may infer from the previous posts... i'm more of an idea person. however, i do really enjoy planning things. although i doubt this is comparable to planning what to make for dinner tonight or what time reservations should be. a girl can dream.

as for the house, it's in the lake balboa area of van nuys. (they are trying desperately not to be stuck with the negative stima surrounding the most vast and valleyish of all the valley towns. i'll let you know how that goes over.) the house is small, but cute, and is in move-in condition. LOVE THAT! of course, that's not to say i haven't woken up stressing about how we are going to be able to buy the washer, dryer, diswasher, bbq, and tons of furniture we need. my mom keeps saying that it will be a "process" and that gives me anxiety. what i'd really like is for the queer eye guys to arrive magically and pimp that place out (and i mean pimp in the strictly gay sense).

i was going to think of a concluding paragraph to sum this whole stupid post up in a cute and meaningful way, but i just realized how stupid the whole thing is. everyone who reads this already knows all this crap. i'll try to post only when i have something new and exciting to say. hold your breath until then please.

congratulations anonymous!

you get your own post in response to your comment!!! WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!





acutally - i understood the movie perfectly.

i didn't draw an iraq analogy because it is the "hip thing to do." i did it because i believe, after studying many sci-fi films, that each and every one of them is a reflection of how we as americans view "alien" threats and war. i understand that this is an adaptation of a piece of literature about alien invasion. the concept of alien invasion has been around... oh pretty much forever. often times humans create pretend situations to deal with their fears about real life. did you ever stop to think how ridiculous it is that some people are afraid of alien invasion when it is like a cajillion more times likely that we get nuked by someone across the pond (either of them)?

movies like this are an outlet for that fear. almost as if it is too terrible to think of the potential horrors in our everyday life, we watch horrific films to release some of that underlying tension. this is why the entertainment industry will never die. even in times of suffering, people love the movies.

in terms of "tons of blood," in the scene where lame-o tom cruise comes out from the farm house to find the landscape covered by alien god-knows-what, if i remember correctly, there is a pool of blood right by the house. you yourself said you didn't know why they were pulling people from out of the cage, i interpreted that they use humans (specifically their blood) as fuel. whether they fuel their machines or their red vines (again with the blood) is moot. the fact is, human blood is a facilitator of their existence while on the earth. and yes, in that case, it seems pretty dumb to kill all of us if they need us to thrive… another reason why they should have explored the aliens’ motivation.

given that the concept for this story isn’t new, what is new are the visuals (and awful, terrible dialogue). it is pretty naïve as a viewer to believe that filmmakers come up with most of the things we see from divine inspiration. they draw and expand on everyday imagery. there were some pretty literal scenes of war, complete with the american military in fatigues, in this film. although it may not be conscious, it is no mistake. this movie is playing on all our fears and comes complete with a late-teenage male risking his life to enlist and defend “us.” if you didn’t at some point think to yourself during the combat scenes, “i wonder if this is what it is like in iraq?” then “i’m not entirely we [sic] saw the same movie.” (how trite of you, btw.)

"war of the worlds" was great... for me to poop on!

ok - so i actually went to the movie theater (a total no-no for me) and saw "war of the worlds." am i the only one who thought this was a piece of crap? wtf? there was absolutely no story, no character development, no "meaning." ugh!!!!

i LOVE sci-fi, and this was one of the worst sci-fi movies i have ever seen. yes, things explode, but come on... where is the deeper meaning? the social commentary???

in addition, tom cruise is awful. i hate him and i hate his ass face.

of course - i'm particularly biased since the big theory project i worked on in college was about apocalyptic sci-fi cinema. the idea is that themes of the apocalypse caused by alien invasion tend to pop up in post-war times. so i looked at flicks like "the day the earth stood still" (early 50s, post WWII) vs films like "independence day" (late 90s, post gulf war) and compared them. sci-fi films dealing with alien invasion are often a reflection of how we as americans feel threatened by those we are at war against. "war of the worlds" is particularly offensive to me because it doesn't even deal with the aliens. usually you'd have some kind of exploration of the aliens' culture and why they are here. in this case, there is nothing. you don't even get a personality from the aliens for the brief period they appear in their natural form on screen.

i don't know about you, but i'd say this is pretty indicative of americans' attitudes towards "terrorists" and basically the entire middle east. we don't care WHO they are. we don't care what their interests are. all we know is that they hate us for apparently no reason.

let us also examine the TONS of blood in the film. um... i'm sorry, but in the dark those huge pools of blood look a lot like oil. and isn't it interesting how the aliens RUN THEIR SPACESHIPS on blood. come on mr. spielberg, could you be any more obvious?

furthermore, it's totally coincidental that the alien spaceships have been stored under the ground, "right under our feet," for years just waiting for the terrori...i mean aliens to strike. i mean, think of all the PLANNING those aliens must have gone to for this attack. it probably took YEARS.

anyway - i just find the whole "war of the worlds" machine to be grotesquely hilarious. i mean, here you have tom cruise, poster child for us "crazy" americans, spreading his idiotic propaganda over every airwave, stomping childishly on every couch he can find and charging his fists in some kind of perceived victory... never once conceding a millimeter of that shit eating grin. all to promote a film that is built on fear, lack of information and the sheer spectacle of blowing shit up.

i'd say that's pretty fucking unbelievable.