Thinkcorps

Let’s get this outta the way: I did not like this movie for so many reasons. I don’t recommend you see it. There’s better ways to spend 2 hours. Lots of ways.

It has no plot (and no real suspense, either, since if you’re breathing, you should know the storyline). Morgan Freeman as narrator supplies every single bit of plot description and defuses any and all suspensefulness in two nuggets at the film’s beginning and end. So for the remaining 1:56, we just follow along while Tom “He’s cocky, but he’s the best” Cruise scurries from Jersey to Boston with daughter and son in tow.

Oh, and lots of stuff gets blowed up—reeaal good.

This is as close a remake of Day After Tomorrow that’s not a remake of Day After Tomorrow as you will ever see. (And somehow, I saw both of them. Ouch.)

I just have to ask: why do aliens bury their war machines deep in the Earth millions of years in the past, only to show up later to get in and drive them over our cities? I mean, if they were here already, why not just drive ‘em around then? Get it over with? And how is it that man, who’s basically instinctually driven to dig holes in the ground like a dog, hasn’t happened to unearth at least one of these machines? I mean, they’re supposedly buried everywhere, right?

Then there’s Spielberg’s genius scene in which the Amtrak goes hurtling by in flames for no apparent reason but to let us know that “No, they couldn’t have just taken the train up there.” Thanks for clearing that up, Stevie.

The film also suffers from those “moments of inane dialog” where the characters don’t do the obvious normal thing. When dickhead teenage son blows up in front of CruiseDad in the middle of fleeing the ginormous hoovering death machines, I kept thinking – no hoping – that Cruise would belt the kid and drag him off. (That’s just good parenting, IMO.) But no, they only reach an impasse of wills, and not having the space or a nearby Starbucks to talk it out, they simmer until later when the son demands to scurry over to his own death (because he “has to see”), despite the clear fact that there’s nothing anyone – anyone – can do. To his fault, Spielberg never makes clear whether you can actually defeat aliens just by “keepin’ it real”.

And Tim Robbins? Why is he in this movie?

Luckily, the movie evenutally ended and we left, getting a snack on the way home. So, “Thank god for Voodoo Donuts.” Seriously, those are some good donuts.

I have to admit that I’ve lost some respect for pretty much everyone circling this GTA: SA unlockable sex mini-game dust up. I mean seriously, how is having raunchy cartoony graphic sex much worse than 1) going on a citywide killing spree, which is basically what GTA’s all about, or 2) having raunchy non-visible sex with a prosititute in your car (if I remember correctly, this increases your health) then running her over after to get your money back?

The best part is that the vaunted ESRB, protector of that nation’s vid-playing children, responded with extreme prejudice, raising the game’s rating from ‘M’ (mature) to ‘AO’ (adults only), prompting retail stores to rip it off the shelves. What’s the difference between the ratings? With AO, only 18 year-olds can buy vs. 17 with M. A sum total difference of—one fricking year!

You know, I seriously worry about this country. Toss in a little sex on top of the most popular, violent immoral game around, and what was accepted and tolerated is now taboo. TABOO!! Why is extreme violence tolerated when sex is not? If we’re really a culture of life (Mr. President), then why is sex, the act that creates life, worse than killing a person?

Unfortunately, logic follows that we are not a culture of life, but rather a culture of havoc and death.

And that my friends, sucks balls.

For those interested in importing Blogger posts into Wordpress and maintaining your old permalink structure for single post pages, here’s what I did.

The problem: Blogger creates permalinks using the post title differently than Wordpress. For one thing, Blogger doesn’t require a post title, and will build permalink using the first few words of the post content. Now, WP doesn’t really need a title either, but you certainly have to have a post_name or you’ll get an unusable permalink and won’t be able to access the post.

Rather than trying to guess Blogger’s method, I decided to modify the import-blogger.php script (NOTE: i’m using the already modded Skelton script to bring in both posts and comments. The code will be different if you’re not using this version of the script.)
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I often worry about the state of our culture, and then somebody does something like this:
superballs unleashed in SF (Flickr image)

Now that’s happiness. Wish I had seen it live.