December 2005 Archives

Wouldn't it be great if Google Earth could be used to direct guided missle attacks against one's enemies? That would be unbelievably cool. Just type in their address, bring up the satellite image, click a button, and boom! One less enemy.

Sure, it could be a bit difficult to get the operation off the ground, since it would require cooperation from the military and such. Either that or the assistance of some evil millionaire, you know, like the ones in action movies that are always funding complex terrorist plots involving nuclear weapons and stuff. There seem to be a lot of those guys out there, ready to provide financial backing for the commission of atrocities, with no clear motivation.

There is a down side to this plan though: the possibility of winding up in prision, or even dead. But what the hell. It's a small price to pay for the smiting of one's enemies.

"The only thing that matters is the ending. It's the most important part of the story. And this one, is very good. This one is perfect."

-Mort Rainey

In Secret Window, the movie based on Stephen King's novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) is in the middle of a messy divorce. His rotten, cheating whore of a wife (Maria Bello) has for some reason gotten to keep their large, expensive house, while Mort is living in a cabin in the woods. Doesn't quite seem fair to me, but maybe that was his choice, I can't remember. So anyway, the filthy hag is now shacking up in said house with her new boyfriend. The new boyfriend, by the way, just happens to be the same asshole with whom she cheated on her husband. How's that for a slap in the face? There is a word to describe this kind of woman. It starts with a "c" and ends with "unt."

But I digress. On to why this movie is great.

Warning! Here there be spoilers.

I'll spare the plot details and get to the important part: the end of the movie. At the end, Mort kills his estranged bitch-wife and buries her in the garden outside of the cabin. Do you know what I call that, dear friends and neighbors? Justice. I call it justice.

Most movies would not have the balls to follow through and actually let the maligned man kill his traitorous ex. She would somehow save herself at the last minute. That is why Secret Window is a great movie. It doesn't cop out, and it allows us, vicariously, to have the justice we crave, without any of the negative consequences.

God bless Stephen King for writing this gem, and God bless David Koepp for being true to King's vision.

It's funny because it's true:

"We should all, like, live in communes and make what we need and trade sorghum for shoes with the commune down the road! Fuck the government! Oh shit, I'm late for my shift at Wendy's."

-from The Bargain Bin Roundup: Part I

It was only recently that I realized that the punk community, or parts of it at least, has so much in common with hippies. If you want to be anti-establishment, fine, but what does that have to do with not bathing?

My biggest problem with the punk rock community, however, is their holier-than-thou posturing: "Our band has never given in to commercialism, therefore we are more pure than other bands." That's great, Pigpen. Can you take a break from eluding success and get those fries I ordered? Thanks.

I mean really, if you love music and want it to be your livelihood, why would you not want to have some success at it? Or maybe they like working at fast food joints. Being successful does not necessarily mean selling out, though unfortunately it seems that many in the punk rock world equate the two.

Over two years after purchasing the DVD, I finally finished watching Stephen King's The Shining , and overall I found it quite enjoyable. Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining has never done much for me; I don't find it scary, and frankly Shelley Duvall's unattractiveness always distracts me.

When it comes to movie adaptations of books, I've always found it difficult to accept the movie as its own entity without comparing it to the source material; particularly if the book is one that I'm attached to.

One aspect of Kubrick's movie that has always bothered me is the lack of sympathy for the Jack Torrance character. In the book and the TV mini-series, Jack's decent nature manages to break through at the end for one final act of redemption. In Kubrick's movie, however, Jack Nicholson is a total bastard right from the start, and he only gets worse. This butchery of a vital character trait has never sat right with me.

So yes, one reason that I prefer the TV mini-series is that it remains faithful to the novel. Another advantage of the mini-seies format is that much more content can be packed into six hours than an hour and half to two hour movie. Thus we get to see more back story of the Torrance family before they become entangled with the Overlook, and a sense of how the happenings there relate to Jack's past.

Also, Rebecca De Mornay is a lot easier on the eyes.

This is the second time in the last couple of weeks that I've read a story about some older woman getting, um , "involved" with a teenage boy:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A 37-year-old woman who is seven months pregnant by her 15-year-old groom says she prefers older men, but the teenager aggressively wooed her.

Lisa Clark, who is charged with child molestation, statutory rape and enticing a child for indecent purposes, said in television interviews Monday that she still hopes to make a life with him and their baby.

...

"It's not like they are making it out to be. Actually, I'd told him 'no' several times because I prefer someone older, but he was just so nice and so sweet," she said.

"[B]ut he was just so nice and sweet." Yeah. That makes sense. "I didn't want to cut my finger off, but he asked me to, and, well, he was just so nice and sweet."

But I digress. Back in November, I stumbled across this gem:

(CNN) -- In a last-minute effort to keep herself out of prison, a 25-year-old middle school teacher pleaded guilty Tuesday to having sex with a 14-year-old.

...

A 14-year-old boy told investigators he had sex with Lafave three times in four days in June 2004, according to court documents. One of those times was in a car while his 15-year-old cousin drove them around, he told authorities.

He also said she performed oral sex on him multiple times, including once at her home, the documents said.

What could possess two attractive women, ages 25 and 37, to get involved with fourteen and fifteen year-old boys? It boggles the mind. And further more, where were these women when I was 15?

So I've been fiddling around with the look of my site recently, and I've got a design that I'm fairly happy with now. However, there is one thing I'm stuck on at the moment.

I want to have a page footer with some copyright info, etc. at the bottom of the page, but I can't seem to get it positioned properly. It seems to wind up floating somewhere in the middle of the page or near the top. My guess is that this has something to do with the absolute positioning of the content and sidebar div's that precede the footer in the document flow, but I'm not sure.

Guess it's time to peruse the InterWeb some more in search of an answer.