Home
entries friends calendar user info Previous Previous

Advertisement

FMI Agent
fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
This novel is comparable to movies like Brazil and Dark City -- especially the latter, in that it's a mystery/thriller where one of the biggest mysteries for the audience is to figure out exactly what's going on. The novel's setting has got much in common with both those movies: an anonymous, gloomy, crime-ridden city from somewhere in the 20th century, full of quirky little details. I was also reminded of Charlie Kaufman movies, again for the quirky little details but also for sci-fi/fantasy-esque plot devices with a psychological flavor.

How the novel starts out )

Pros: Tone and atmosphere. Details )

Cons: a bunch of these )

Long story short: I'd be careful about who I'd recommend it to, but I found it to entertaining and memorable. An impressive first novel.

Tags: , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
The author and former Twins blogger ("Batgirl") has a new children's fantasy book out. Its title is The Immortal Fire, and it's the third in a trilogy with a Greek myth theme. I attended a reading today. The excerpt was amusing, the author gracious. There are two more area readings, one this Tuesday the 30th and the other on July 25.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Found this in a spam message. Reminded me of [info]derspatchel's poetry night with emily (currently down, alas).
sheer munch tiff dicer.
mauve scop gnome spore!
ahoy binge skua phase!
chum mauve targe ultra.
hawse fix.
squaw canoe silky die?
hazy hypo munch.
die scop.
coast tusk oared pise?
check silky.
tali pox sheer arc!
grand nitre prose.
arc kirk suit actor!
pox gamp.
hazy weak mutt welch?
weak siege.
sheer pest.
dwell ilex.
brier coast misty skua?
kirk loth.
pox ripe mutt.
actor genet busk depth?
hyp ultra agave actor?
suit gamp hyp kine?

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
I like the multi-ethnic nature of this one. The author's name does not make me think "A Moldovan."

I'm Sumeena Razzaqi, A Moldovan whose late husband was into Farming and private practice all his life before his death without a child of our own. I made a vow to uplift the down-trodden and the less-privileged individuals as i have passion for persons who cannot help themselves due to physical disability or financial predicament.

Recently diagnosed of a cancer, i decided to donate the sum of $300,000 which was derived from his vast estates and investment in capital market.

Contact my lawyer with this specified email address Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) Email: redacted and tell him that I have WILLED $300,000 to you by quoting my personal reference number; Law/WoleChambers/Solicitor/SVR/WILL/9834520012, and I will also notify him that I am WILLING that amount to you for a specific purpose.

Remain blessed,
Yours Faithfully,
Mrs. Sumeena Razzaqi

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
(riffing on a link posted quite innocently by [info]meep someplace)

So Earth is traveling through space, minding its own business, until in 1908 this comet flies by and just starts ripping into it. We're talking major natural disaster here: a gigantic explosion, hundreds of square miles of trees leveled, scorched earth everywhere. Earth is left devastated and shaken, particularly due to the unexpected and arbitrary nature of the attack. Earth didn't do anything to provoke this! For a comet to come in out of nowhere and blast away at the Earth like that--that's humiliating, uncalled-for, just plain wrong.

For the next hundred years, the scientists of Earth go into detective mode, trying to piece together exactly what happened. How could Earth get knocked down so badly? Was it the direction it was traveling? Was it the rotation, the orbital eccentricity? Could humanity have done something to deserve this shame that had been visited upon the Earth?

Ultimately the scientists agree on a comprehensive theory that answers these questions (basically, "It was all the comet's fault"). The world then moves on to the next phase of its response: Preparing Earth to defend itself the next time around. Research, development, and activism take place on many fronts:
  • Long-range ballistic missiles, designed to stop an approaching comet in its tracks.
  • Smaller warheads, designed to throw an incoming comet off course and redirect its attack at some other unsuspecting planet.
(In fact, a joint statement endorsing these military programs is issued by all major governments; the Nobel Prize committee; Greenpeace; a blue-ribbon panel of ethicists; a conference attended by leaders of the world's fifteen most popular religions; and a coalition of actors, pro athletes, musical artists, and commentators.)
  • Underground shelters and other recovery measures, inspired by the harsh possibility that maybe comet attacks are inevitable. (These prove to be unpopular.)
  • Training people to reject the notion of helplessness in the face of comet attacks, to stand as one and fight back against a looming global threat.
  • Rapid-response early warning systems, so people can band together and do what needs doing upon news of imminent comet approach.
  • Moment-to-moment situational management training, so those involved in repelling a comet attack will keep their nerve and follow through when the time comes.
In 2045, the same comet comes back, only this time the Earth and its people are ready. As news spreads via the early response network, billions of humans gather quickly at preselected meeting sites. With watches synchronized, technicians at each site turn on sophisticated recording equipment at the agreed-upon hour. The equipment is linked to a central station that will consolidate radio wave data from multiple sources, convert that data into a single signal, amplify that signal, and then send out that signal into the path of the incoming comet.

Finally, on cue, the people of Earth speak, sending a single message of unity and defiance into the cosmos; and they say, "Fuck you, comet, fuck you."

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
From: Arnulfo Yazzie
Subject: Fill your life with meaning!  Try Viagra!

Tags:
Current Mood: thoughtful

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Today's crop of spam subject headers includes:
  • ascent your darling couch adventures
  • Logical answer for bed flaccidity
  • Doping for your porksword!
  • Step on the arousal glory way

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
  • One professor writes an op-ed in The NY Times, decrying the state of higher education (specifically graduate education) and calling for sweeping changes. Another professor responds with a piece in The New Republic, picking apart the first professor's arguments. my $0.02 )
  • thinkindie.com is a new online music store. A startribune.com blogger has a post in which he claims that ThinkIndie's mp3 bitrate of 320 kbps is superior to all those sucka mc's standard mp3's out there. I wonder: Just how high-quality does your audio equipment have to be in order to hear a difference? Does anyone reading this have some experience to report?
  • Via [info]meep on Twitter: Prezi, "the zooming editor for stunning presentations." a first-glance review )
  • Also via Twitter, for Joss Whedon fans: Alyson Hannigan (@alydenisof) and Felicia Day (@feliciaday) take a rather fetching snapshot together.
  • Better Off Ted is a sitcom about life at a technology company with cutting-edge research and questionable ethics. It's one of those self-consciously quirky shows, but it's so good-natured that it works. At least for me. And now they're threatening to cancel it. Join the "Save Better Off Ted" group if you're on Facebook and so inclined.

Tags: , , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
N.B. Horvath reviews the short, quirky art/puzzle game.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
GUY AT SHOW: Hey bra'! How we doin', man?

Cut to BATMAN in costume. He stands rigidly at attention, staring back at GUY AT SHOW. There is a long pause.
BATMAN (in his raspy voice): I'm fine.
GUY AT SHOW: It's been a while man, life's so rad! [Pause] This band's my favorite man, don't ya love 'em?

BATMAN flinches slightly, as if shaken by some bad news. He says nothing.
GUY AT SHOW: Aw man, you want a beer?

BATMAN hesitates, evidently struggling with a great dilemma. Finally and with great reluctance, he nods his head Yes.
GUY AT SHOW: Aw man, this is the best. I'm so glad we're all back together and stuff. This is great, man.

BATMAN leans against a wall. For a moment he looks overwhelmed, defeated, crushed. Then he stands up straight once again. An unshakable inner resolve has reasserted itself.
GUY AT SHOW: Hey, did you know about the party after the show? Aw man, it's gonna be the best. I'm so stoked. Take it easy bra'!

Cut to an adjacent rooftop. BATMAN jumps out through a window onto the roof, then climbs into a waiting helicopter. The helicopter takes off and flies away into the night.

Tags: , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Saw this as part of the Mpls-St Paul International Film Festival. I liked this movie quite a bit. Sam Rockwell is fantastic as an astronaut on a lunar base with only a HAL-like computer (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for a companion. It's comparable to 2001, Solaris (the Soderbergh one, anyway), and various lesser-known "space mission gone awry" genre flicks, but it has a certain freshness to it. It gets points for telling a thought-provoking story without clobbering the viewer over the head with a Message.

Side note: I didn't guess the plot twists in advance (dang!), but at least I was able to understand those twists, more or less, as they happened (phew!). On the other hand, it wasn't until I read some other reviews afterward that I understood certain character development aspects in the movie.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Thus saith news.bbc.co.uk. Excerpt:

Last year, it was expected that [the sun] would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

The article goes on to quote an expert telling us, No, this does not mean that the sun will have any mitigating impact on global warming. All the same, I expect that global warming skeptics from Glenn Beck to former basketball great Kevin McHale would treat this finding as evidence in support of their views. An aside: I find myself hoping those skeptics are right. )

Anyway: It's an interesting article. I know now what the Maunder minimum is.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
A pendant inspired a poem, which inspired a meme. I did a riff on it, with much help from Wikipedia. This can be safely skipped )

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
So I was listening to Fresh Air this evening. Terry Gross was interviewing science journalist Jonah Lehrer, author of a new book called How We Decide. It's about how decisions get processed in our brains. In the Fresh Air interview, Lehrer discussed the neurotransmitter dopamine, which appears to play an extremely important and complicated role in our brains. From my (extreme outsider) perspective, the topic in general sounded fascinating. But there was one moment in the interview that rubbed me the wrong way and made me (perhaps unfairly) wonder whether the book is worth picking up.

details )

Tags:
Current Mood: skeptical

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
...or at least a good deal more complicated than is often acknowledged.

Not that I've worked out this sort of thing in depth, but: It seems that all kinds of people bash their opponents for inconsistency (or, worse, hypocrisy), and I suspect that they often do so unfairly.

Cut to protect your blood pressure )

Mind you, I'm not saying that anyone on any side of those real-life issues is definitely right or wrong; rather, I'm suggesting that what one believes about the rightness of an issue can have a complicated relationship with how one acts on it under a given set of circumstances.

Tags:
Current Mood: thoughtful

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Unfortunately, I was unable to see what one had to do to gain those character traits. I would have had to download images from the mail server. But I did like the subject header.

Tags:
Current Mood: impressed

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
[Screenshots, Ryan Seacrest's exit interview with George Ramirez]My favorite unsuccessful American Idol audition was given by George Ramirez, an 18-year-old physics student from Tallahassee. The footage of his audition is at once funny, sad, and inspirational. I especially like the ending interview, in which George and host Ryan Seacrest both look extremely perplexed.

more screenshots and a transcript from that last interview )

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
... each by published authors. Again: Here be spoilers.

Adam Cadre loved it.
Catherynne Valente saw some serious flaws.

The movie version comes out later this year.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
[info]tongodeon has an interesting post about the idea of consilience, in which "many independent lines of evidence" describe some phenomenon in a consistent way, producing a body of evidence (for evolution or, say, that the Battle of Hastings occurred) that is greater than the sum of its parts. With some reluctance, I'm following my train of thought toward religion once again, from a different angle. No flames, please! I hope this post is not taken as an attack on anyone's religion. I'm asking what I believe to be tough but fair questions.

Lots of questions )

In general I don't want to question anyone's personal experience, but I do wonder how people reconcile their religious beliefs about the supernatural with those of other religions.

Tags:
Current Mood: confused

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Let's see...I just watched Dark Days (2000, dir. Marc Singer), a documentary about a homeless colony living in railroad tunnels underneath New York City. Suitably fascinating, heartbreaking, heartwarming, bleak and hopeful.

A while back I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, dir. somebody-or-other). Nick from Freaks&Geeks gets dumped by Veronica Mars, goes to Hawaii, and meets Jackie from That 70s Show. Had some funny moments (the vampire puppet opera steals the show) but it wasn't my thing. As I recall, it seemed to try and give depth to some of its characters by giving an unsympathetic character a sympathetic scene, or vice versa. I don't think it succeeded, though. I think that if you try to do that and fail, you lose some plot coherency and risk ending up with Just A Bunch Of Stuff That Happened.

Also a while back: Hancock (2008, dir. somebody-or-other). Will Smith as an unlikely superhero. This was enjoyable, in part because it didn't rely on Yet Another Supervillain or take itself so danged seriously.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Such an evocative phrase! The guy is being pilloried, predictably and (I think) a little unfairly. It's one thing to oppose abstinence-only education, another thing altogether to oppose any discussion of abstinence (which is how some of the clown-bashing reads, to me anyway).

Slightly off-topic, but there ought to be an "abstinence clown" variant on the shaggy dog story about the verbally abusive clown.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Wishing you and yours a happy Livejournal Rabbit Hole Day.

"President Rice." Still makes me tear up. Of course, the liberals are all ambivalent. I guess they'd have had an easier time of it if McCain had gotten over his burnout from 2000 and been elected President. As it is, they're saying that Condoleezza's supporters are a mindless "army" and (even worse) that the corporate media is blindly worshiping her. Sorry, liberals: you should realize that the media would rightly celebrate the first African-American President and the first female President, regardless of which political party she belonged to.

Even without the historical significance, I'm just happy that the nightmare Gore years are over with. His "war on pollution" ended up being a war on credibility, which can only leave us unprotected against the growing terrorist threat. Thank goodness the new President is saying all the right things about finding common ground. Perhaps liberals will come around and realize that fighting terror won't be easy.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
  • [info]tablesaw on communicating, with a fascinating discussion of certain metaphors. The context is an evidently controversial discussion of writing and cultural appropriation, but it's interesting on its own in any case. Excerpt:
    The conduit metaphor has three components that work together (expressed here by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By):
    1. Ideas (or meanings) are objects.
    2. Linguistic expressions are containers.
    3. Communication is sending.
    [info]tablesaw goes on to discuss flaws with this analogy and to suggest a different way of thinking about communication.

  • [info]markm notices an unintended optical illusion on the fivethirtyeight.com website.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
...while my computers are down.

Current Mood: irritated

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
By way of [info]pegkerr. Brought a tear to my eye and a shiver to my spine. The President-Elect appears for just a moment, around 3:31.

This will be a big week.

Current Mood: pleased

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend

Originally posted on fmi-agent.vox.com

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
It seems very positive, unlike much of the rest of his legacy.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
PICARD, LaFORGE, and COUNSELOR TROI are gathered on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

LaFORGE: Do you think the away team will be safe down there, Captain? Worf didn't look too comfortable in that disguise.
PICARD: Let's find out, Geordi. Onscreen!

The viewscreen lights up, revealing a crowded nightclub scene. WORF is there, dressed in jeans and a bowling shirt. GUY AT SHOW enters from left and approaches WORF.

GUY AT SHOW: Hey bra'! How we doin', man?
WORF (choosing his words carefully): I am well.
GUY AT SHOW: It's been a while man, life's so rad! [Pause] This band's my favorite man, don't ya love 'em?
WORF: Yes.
GUY AT SHOW: Aw man, you want a beer?
WORF: Yes.
GUY AT SHOW: Aw man, this is the best. I'm so glad we're all back together and stuff. This is great, man.
WORF: [Pause] ... Yes.

Zoom in to closeup shot of GUY AT SHOW, seen from over WORF's shoulder.

GUY AT SHOW: Hey, did you know about the party after the show? Aw man, it's gonna be the best. I'm so stoked. Take it easy bra'!

Cut back to bridge of the Enterprise.

COUNSELOR TROI: He's hiding something.

Tags: , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
... here he is in The Return of Captain Invincible (1983). Apparently the movie tries to be a campy superhero spoof (perhaps like the Adam West Batman TV series) and a trashy musical (like Rocky Horror), and judging from the reviews it mostly fails. The musical clip below is entertaining though.


Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
GUY AT SHOW is talking with COUNT DOOKU, who can barely contain his disdain.

GUY AT SHOW: Hey, bra'! What's up? It's been a while. Life's so rad. I'm so glad we're all back together and stuff. I'm so stoked! How you doin', man?

COUNT DOOKU stares balefully at GUY AT SHOW. There is a long pause.

COUNT DOOKU: Fine.

Tags: , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend


A short, very quirky freeware download game for Windows, from BLENDO Games. The atmosphere reminded me a little of Portal. Distinguishing features include Xavier Cugat music on the soundtrack.

I'll not spoil any of the gameplay here, except to warn you that it gets tricky after you've photographed three of the five birds. (I did find hints online, in a comment thread.) Recommended.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Specifically, the Robert Downey Jr one and the Heath Ledger one. My $0.02: they're both horribly overrated!!! (the movies, not the actors.)

My Twitter posts about Iron Man:
  • watching Iron Man with @Lyriccol. disappointing. i haven't felt this smugly superior since i walked out on The Matrix years ago
  • jim emerson ( http://bit.ly/1btg ) on the afghanistan scenes: "Is this political commentary of some kind, or just exploitation?"
  • good actors and performances wasted...a plot twist so predictable, even I predicted it...little touches ripped off from Star Wars.[/rant]
More on the Afghanistan scenes: The one where the hi-tech American superhero flies in and saves innocent Middle Eastern children, seemed paternalistic to me.

I ended up feeling smugly superior to The Dark Knight as well. Granted, I didn't find it to be as empty as Iron Man was...but it too failed to capture my interest. The premise of a supervillain who concocts moral dilemmas for the good citizens is uninteresting to me. Supervillains in general are kind of the opposite of the banality of evil idea. And the movie takes itself so. Damn. Seriously. (I had the same problem with Batman Begins.) It makes me appreciate the Adam West Batman that much more.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Abysmally unfunny (except for a few gags here and there). Nowhere near as ironic as it needed to be.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Personal
I moved in with my girlfriend...and then we got engaged! I also got started on another job/career search. And I traveled to Hawaii (a deep voice says: "our next hula depicts the creation of ... the island of Maui"), Las Vegas, New York, and Pennsylvania.

A prediction from 2003
As part of a (filtered...you'll have to trust me) Livejournal post in 2003, I tried to imagine what life might be like in 2008. It included a number of imagined global disasters. )
I wish I had been completely wrong.

Politics
This effin' election is finally over. I got pretty obsessed with it.

Music, TV, Movies, Games
New CD's included Juliana Hatfield, How To Walk Away (this was one of those that I listened to every day for weeks); The Weepies, Hideaway; Thea Gilmore, Liejacker. New-to-me songs, via Pandora and other sources, included Motorhead and Girlschool, "Please Don't Touch;" Dance Hall Crashers, "Triple Track" original version (a live version, all 30 seconds of it, is currently available on YouTube); and Redding, "In Montauk."

I didn't see many new movies. I liked Persepolis (2007). On the tube, I got hooked on the Rock of Love franchise; I was hoping things would work out for Bret and Ambre, but it was not to be. I enjoyed other reality TV shows. I hope to try perplexed green tofu someday...when my fiancee watches the clothing makeover show "What Not To Wear," I watch along with; I admire those peoples' willingness to go outside their [scarequote]comfort zone[/scarequote], on national TV no less. I watched the conclusion of The Wire, the start of Mad Men, and seasons of Pushing Daisies and The Office, as well as old reruns of Peter Gunn and Doctor Who via Netflix. I played Portal over Thanksgiving weekend and greatly enjoyed it. My man Horvath played Circuit's Edge and gave it a mixed review.

Books
Not many of these, either :\ Many were on audiobook. Highlights included Bill Bishop, The Big Sort; Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational; Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, Y: The Last Man graphic novel series; Malcolm Gladwell, Blink; and Timothy Taylor's Economics course on tape at The Teaching Company.

Finally, a great $WINTERHOLIDAY gift from my fiancee: Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book. It is, in a word, awesome. The narrator is a hyperactive 10-year-old boy; the [scarequote]editor[/scarequote] is his babysitter, a philosophy major who humors him. It also comes across, rather poignantly, that his parents are having difficulty dealing with the kid, among other troubles. I wonder how much of the crazy 10-year-old writing is autobiographical?

Blogs and Podcasts
Some favorites from 2008. Politics blogs: fivethirtyeight.com; Ta-Nehisi Coates; TPM Election Central. Podcasts: This American Life; Planet Money; Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. Miscellany: I got hooked on Facebook and Twitter.

Fantasy sports and futures bets
I had a great year in this area. I won a little $$$ on the Iowa Electronic Market and Intrade -- including about $70 on a $5 bet that an obscure Alaska governor would be nominated for Vice President. I also won fantasy baseball and football leagues, plus a Vegas bet that the Rays would make the World Series. I have a small bet on the Vikings to make the Super Bowl. It may yet happen, although they have to beat the defending champion Giants this weekend.

Watch out for falling sheet metal, everyone. 2009 is upon us.

Tags: , , , , , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
"She's hiding something," Counselor Troi said.

Tags: ,
Current Mood: thoughtful

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
N B Horvath reviews the 1990 adventure game, based on a novel by George Alec Effinger.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
A Star Tribune photo of sad, blonde Vikings fans after their 1998 playoff loss to Atlanta is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The newspaper's hard-boiled sports columnist has written a "ten years later" piece about them, complete with a reunion photo.

A commenter on that column writes that the loss was a blessing in disguise, as the team would likely have lost its fifth Super Bowl to Denver had it gotten past Atlanta.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
  • "I bet I could have done something with that check instead of just cashing it," Dee posited.
  • "Unless my broken hand heals, you're going to have to write my autographs for me," said Tom significantly.
  • "Election officials in Tallahassee found thousands of defective ballots," was Tom's florid account.
  • "Ray Jay, Magic and I are all wondering: What's the best way to bathe a four-week-old baby?" asked Tom, in sync with Johnson and Johnson.
  • "Why won't you let me speak Ebonics in the house?" Lizzie Borden asked her mother repeatedly.
  • "I've just invented Swift Latin! Ullpully imully ingerfully," said Tom artfully.
  • "She's my parrot, and she committed a crime, and it was a crime against God, and it took place at an English private school!" said Tom using polysyndeton.
  • "I've coined an adverb for when you use multiple heating elements," said Tim Berners-Lee.
The last one is new as of December '08. I'll update this entry on those rare occasions when I think of another new one.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
... from the Timberwolves and Lynx. Features slightly creepy Flash animation. That's Al Jefferson doing the deep bass YEAHs, which made me laugh out loud. Sadly, the good-natured atmosphere is in stark contrast with the troubles these franchises have had on the court.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
... that I don't have time to review in depth or post links for.
  • Y: The Last Man. Postapocalyptic graphic novel series about life after a disaster, in which every man (in fact, every male mammal) has suddenly died of mysterious causes. It's quite the page-turner, like watching an espionage thriller movie. Not exploitative like it could have been.
  • The Colbert Christmas Special. zomg, it gets those old TV variety shows just right. Cringeworthy and hilarious.
  • Portal videogame, in which you solve puzzle rooms via the magic of teleportation, while a disembodied voice gives instructions and increasingly strange commentary. I stayed up all night over Thanksgiving weekend playing this. Highly engrossing. I needed only a handful of hints/walkthrough text and YouTube footage to finish it, which was great, although I was feeling pretty dragged-out and impatient by the time I got to the ending. Then again, the closing song made that worthwhile. Too, the Weighted Companion Cube alone is worth the price of admission. I know [info]sargentjr and others enjoyed that item, whose significance I won't spoil. Some of the gameplay involves flying through the air, in a way that reminds me of my recurring flying dreams.
  • Dark Integers and Other Stories, by Greg Egan. I'm only partway through this story collection. Two of the stories are about a world where mathematical logic is relative and can be twisted in a way that we normally think is impossible -- in much the same way people once assumed geometry had to be Euclidean, or physics had to be Newtonian before Einstein. It's an interesting hypothesis and very thought-provoking, although Egan doesn't entirely measure up to the (very, very difficult) task of building the plot of a story around it.

Tags: , , , ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
I found this song, one of the few available by DHC that I don't already own*, and now I have it on repeat. Thirty seconds of bliss to my ears.

Anyone have any recommendations for music that I might find transporting? At one point I made an amazon.com list of Assorted Underrated Catchy Pop, Mostly Girl Vocals. I am a sucker for female harmonies. Thanks in advance if you happen to know of anything.

* OK, I have the live version.

Tags: ,
Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Dance Hall Crashers, "Triple Track"

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
On this day in 1960, President-Elect John F. Kennedy announced the hiring of Charles Alexander Knott, a prominent DC attorney, to the office of Community Liaison for Government Public Services. Knott, who had been a classmate of Kennedy's at Harvard, was best known for his work with charitable foundations in establishing government education grants for disadvantaged youth. He also had ties with the banking industry. In 1958, he had been acquitted on corruption charges involving the Mafia, the Teamsters, and police departments in several cities along the Eastern Seaboard. Too, there were rumors about womanizing and drug use, and even worse activities. But the official press hailed the choice of Charles A. Knott as a sound choice for the public services liaison position.

Why did Kennedy choose the man he did for this post?

Answer lies within )

Current Mood: indescribable

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
... OK, technically, it's just his character from Recount.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
McCain was ahead by a neck.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
Q: Why did the Obamas redecorate the West Wing in dark grey earth tones?

A: The Audacity of Taupe.

Tags: ,
Current Mood: insomniac

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
This one's a little more obscure.
Q: Why did http://www.whitehouse.gov switch to an open-source Web application server?

A: The Audacity of Zope.

Tags: ,
Current Mood: insomniac

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
We dined at Palomino Minneapolis last night. Tasty food and good service. Distracted in part by current events, each of us thought the other had remembered to bring home the tiramisu in the to-go box. So today I called and asked whether she could come pick up another slice, and they kindly agreed. So that was nice of them.
fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
By way of [info]sargentjr, right-wing Christian activist James Dobson wrote a "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America".  I only skimmed it, but gays seem to figure prominently.

Tags: ,

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
LJer [info]rollick got some spam asserting that the actress is the clone of one Scarlett Galabekian. The warning message is highly entertaining, in an All Your Base or Sheesh...Monka way.

Tags:

fmi_agent
Add to Memories
Tell a Friend
What [info]tablesaw and Melissa McEwan said. Tread very carefully when discussing this story.

Tags:

profile
FMI Agent
User: [info]fmi_agent
Name: FMI Agent
calendar
Back July 2009
1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031
links
page summary
tags