Sign on a lunch cart

Closed today. Too damn hot. Gone surfing.

Damn, I wish I could get away with that!

Funny web site

This has to be one of the funniest Flash-based web sites I've ever seen:

http://www.blacksheep-themovie.com/BlackSheep.aspx

It's enough to make me want to go see the movie when it opens at the Hollywood Theater later this month.

"This is War"

A's father and A and I went to go see "This is War" at the Hollywood Theatre this evening.

Wow.

"This is War" is a remarkable non-political documentary about the experiences of an Oregon National Guard unit in their own words using their own video. With the near-ubiquity of digital video recording devices and Internet connectivity, this is the first war where those of us back home can see what the soldiers are seeing in near-realtime. This film captures the essence of what it is to be an infantry soldier in Iraq: hot, dusty, boring, terrifying, bloody.

The film relies primarily on the words of the soldiers themselves. Both on video they shot themselves while in Iraq, as well as in interviews after they returned home. The images are shockingly violent, the language unsurprisingly profane, and the message ambiguous. It's absolutely not something I'd want to show to young children. On the other hand, it's exactly the sort of thing the teens and adults of this country need to see.

The film doesn't try to tell the audience what to think, rather it attempts to portray the soldiers' experience as vividly and accurately as possible. While I think it succeeds for the most part, I think the violence was somewhat toned down for the film to make it more palatable for a wider, largely-sheltered American audience. I walked out of the theater after the film certain the segments on Fallujah did not include all the footage it could have. On the other hand, had they included more graphic violence, the filmmakers would have risked alienating their potential audience and negating the film's purpose.

All in all, I think the film was excellently-done. Absolutely worth seeing. Bravo to the filmmakers for producing a gripping and respectful portrayal of these soldiers' experiences.

Compassionate care

Needless to say, we've been seeing a lot of our vet Dr. Jeffrey Judkins over the past six months while M fought her illness. He endured angst-ridden pages from us at all hours of the night, phone consultations on the weekends, endless different medications - we counted more than 30 bottles of both Western pharmacutecals and Eastern herbs and homeopathic remedies - while trying to help our beloved feline family member recover. I've always been impressed with his (and his wonderful staff's) professional ability and his compassion, but he did something today that we never would have expected: he sent us flowers.

I am astounded. Sometimes the smallest unexpected gesture can have an impact far beyond expectations. Something so simple, yet profound in its indication of how much Dr. Judkins cares about the people he sees (both two and four-footed people). When was the last time your doctor sent you anything but a bill?

Dr. Judkins and everyone at the Hawthorne Veterinary Clinic, from M and A and I thank you for your exemplary care and compassion.

For all the rest of you out there in the Portland area with four-footed family members, I can't recommend the folks at Hawthorne Veterinary Clinic enough for their holistic and expert care. They're the best.

M has left the building

1995-2007

Her Highness will no longer be holding court at CarbFest. No more Secret Sam Messages.

After eleven wonderful years as part of our family, she has moved on. She spent the day yesterday purring and napping on her perch in a sunny window. Early this morning it was clear that it was time. She told us so. After a six-month battle with what we think was a liver tumor, she died at home in A's lap at 5:00 this morning.

Thank you for gracing us with your presence. I hope we proved worthy.

Insurgency

I'm not sure what to think of this: Insurgency. Some clearly very talented game designers have taken the game engine that runs the very popular game Half-Life 2 and created an incredibly realistic-looking first-person simulation of the current war in Iraq.

I've played and enjoyed several first-person shooter games over the years, but they've always been clearly fictional (usually sci-fi, historical fiction, or fantasy) where it is easy to draw the line between virtual and real, between fiction and fact. I am uncomfortable with turning the very real carnage in Iraq into a game. It demeans and belittles the ongoing tragedy there. Blurring the lines between games and reality is a slippery slope - it makes it too easy to look at the images and stories coming out of the Middle East and not feel anything.

On the other hand, the trailer starts out silent with an interesting quote in stark white on a black background:

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood, it is hard to shake hands with her.
-Oscar Wilde

The images that follow in the trailer show just how brutal and graphic modern 3-D rendering engines can be with chillingly-realistic blood spatter and physics juxtaposed with text like:

300,000 American troops ... not greeted as liberators ... but as invaders

As if the designers are expressing some sort of anti-war message.

Watching the trailer, I couldn't tell if the text commentary was just hype in a crass attempt to stir up controversy over the game and thereby garnering more attention (and therefore more downloads), or whether the game itself really is intended as something to expose the American public to the brutality of the war.

The technophile in me says it's a creative use of technology to accomplish the latter.

The cynic in me says the former.

Tempting ...

8-Bit Operators |
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Astralwerks Records |
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Cancer cancer everywhere

Apparently the old adage about good things coming in threes also has its counterpoint.

I found out on Friday that my aunt has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She's my mother's youngest sister. The fact that she's been diagnosed with the very thing my mother died of is more than a little unsettling.

Our dear friends Kaphine and RealSuperGirl sent out word that they were coming back to this coast unexpectedly to see Kaphine's father, who is currently dying of cancer and has taken a turn for the worse.

TeacherRefPoet posted about a student of his who recently lost her battle with leukemia.

Gray Eubanks, we miss you terribly!

Sorry, April. We tried to give you a chance to get better. We tried to give you time to get over your inexperience while you stumble your way through our morning news on Oregon Public Broadcasting. We knew Gray was an impossibly hard act to follow, so we tried to cut you some slack. But after two years of listening to you constantly get it wrong, two years of being relieved when you go on vacation and we get a guest host, two years of completely incomprehensible traffic and wearther reports, the honeymoon is over. We want Gray back.

This morning I tuned in to listen to the beginning of the BBC's live broadcast of World Have your Say from our beloved Bagdad Theater. I was mortified to hear you completely blow the introduction as it was broadcast to the world. No, the Bagdad is not "gothic" (I'd call it Art Deco, if anything) and any Portland resident worth her salt would know that it's not owned by the manager Sue, but rather one of the McMenamin brothers' local chain of brew pubs. I turned the radio off at that point. I couldn't take any more.

Gray, please come back to us! We of the Portland Morning Addiction audience miss you terribly! We miss your humor. We miss your ability to get the facts straight. Most of all, we miss your delightfully snarky comments. Please! We're begging you!

Best. Post. Evar.

Oh, my. I haven't laughed this hard in days. Check out this comment posted on a ZDNet blog:

You are kidding arent you ?
Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?

That sounds preposterous to me.

If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.

I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.
Posted by: jerryleecooper Posted on: 03/14/07

Maybe I shouldn't have hitched my career to this cart being pulled by a funny-looking penguin named Tux?