dogslife

I realize that buying state of the art electronics is a losing proposition from the outset, but I do so love gizmos. However, a 50" widescreen DLP for around five grand is pretty sweet, given what decent large-format TVs were going for even just a year or two ago. Plasmas and LCDs are prohibitively expensive, I haven't seen a quality CRT in a widescreen, and projection models risk burn-in (a problem for any gamer), so DLP seemed like the answer, except for the fact that it has this one latency issue which makes it unacceptable for the rhythm-gamer set. Apparantly it also throws off his Street Fighter, and we can't have that. Otherwise I might beat him once in a while.

Nonetheless, I think the car is ultimately the way to go. (Besides, if you and God are on the same page, I'd be a fool to resist.) Besides, in our tiny apartment, the TV is about three feet from the couch, so even my meagre 19" RCA that I bought in University for three hundred bucks is effectively seventy-five feet wide from that distance.

I may have to start perusing the dealerships to decide between the Acura and the Mazda. I'm giving a closer look to the Mazda3 now, but I think my heart will always belong to the Protege5. Is it wrong of me to like the yellow one? Back when I was still living with my parents, my mom drove a yellow jeep that I wound up using a great deal of the time, and my friends had no end of fun with the colour. I affectionately referred to it as "the Tonka". But I see the yellow P5s on the road now and they always catch my eye.

I never claimed to have any sense of style. I just know what I hate. And I don't hate those.

If my gf and I were to ever part ways, I think the material possessions would be pretty easy to sort through. We have pretty distinct tastes, and the only major purchase we've done jointly was a big Ikea run last summer, and just about everything in that transaction was bought in pairs. Still, I don't think the fact that sorting the property would be easy would make the rest of it any easier. We could have had a car for the two of us ages ago, but we're keeping the big things seperate for now, just until we're sure that we're sure. We's in no rush.

[Edited on Feb 21, 2004 8:47AM]

NO TAG BACKS

Ho. Re:HOOK UP, I meant no harm, I was interested in a picture of a jacket that was posted by flux a while ago, and then it all went pear shaped. I'm sorry if I offended anyone, especially said jacket wearer, which I've allready appologized to. Why am I saying this, as if you should care about my appologies... I guess I want to lead a life of reconciliation.

<--

[Edited on Feb 20, 2004 6:27AM]

The world's literary gravity seems to be every writer's enemy. [here is where I disgrace your journal by continuing to write about people whose work is profoundly un-literary] I went to a reading by William Gibson earlier tonight [ack! sci-fi alert! run!], who basically talked about doing the same thing for everything he's published, including Neuromancer and his most recent book. On the other side, of course, is the idea that when you have a good idea, but nowhere else to go with it, setting it aside for more work in the future is the best and possibly most difficult act of self-preservation imaginable.

[To salvage my reputation, I'm currently reading something by Jose Saramago]

And as for the question from your last entry, I think you should only switch to Obuibo if you can promise us the same lack of propriety you attribute to that character. I'd pay to see a dogslife doppelganger wreak havoc.

I totally agree with you. I'm probably coming off on the Boards like a huge industry thug right now, but I think that copyright law has to become a lot more clear, and that fair use has to be expanded to realistically encompass the genuine needs of the end-user.

New ventures are most definitely needed, and the current model isn't sustainable.

But why does it have to change because people are killing it, and not simply because the technology is there to redefine it?

At the end of the day, why isn't "you shouldn't do it because it's wrong" a good enough argument?

Yes, we finally convinced the navy to stop testing their damned nukes out at the base.

I want to point out that I did read your earlier entry about the importance of form (ie a book is deliberately a book, whereas a film is deliberately a film, and a small furry creature from alpha centauri is deliberately a small furry creature from alpha centauri), but I was curious if I could get you to think about your own art outside the box, just for a bit of fun.

I hate going to the dentist.

Okay, less cooking, more journals!!!

I'm chairbound and bored! (Which would make a particularly nasty double entendre subtitle for a scene from Pulp Fiction, now that I think of it.)

I have a whole pile of Talking Heads stuff, starting with the Sand in the Vaseline compilation and then moving on into purchasing the individual albums. I don't know if they're remasters or not, but it's positively eerie how much quality output those guys had. I've even got the book ("This Must Be The Place") sitting unread on my shelves after years of hitting every Chapters and Indigo I came across in desperate hope of seeing it. I should tear into that. I've got a few weeks to kill.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around that message, and somehow, it just does not compute.

Hey, are you Canadians awake yet? Good morning!

thanks for the second testi....
It really means a lot to moi...

The videogame.

I do think "better" in this case is totally subjective, and almost always boils down to "which one you experienced first".

Like hearing a really good cover song before you've listened to the original version, it's hard to think that the original one is the "right" one (case in point, the Pixies cover of "Head On").

If you love a book, the movie's almost certainly going to be different, and almost never in a way you'll see as an improvement. And vice versa.

I loved the movie Fight Club, but after hearing how the novel was much better, was very let down when I read the book.

Oh, and even though Our Favorite Six Foot Swede (no, not Leif Erikson) didn't make it, I still made it out to the SGB and had a blast overall. No wife, no drinking, and I kept my pants on, much to the delight of the afterparty attendees.

I had your reaction when, in the later part of high school, friends started photographing their artwork for inclusion in portfolios to be submitted to art schools. Conversations went:
-What are you doing?
-Photographing my paintings.
-Why?
-I need pictures to send to Tyler/MICA/UArts/SVA with my application.
-Are you applying to the photography program?
-No, why?


I think the source of your ire is not that people are actually saying the movie was better than the book, or vice versa, but that the film just wasn't very good in strictly filmic terms, and that's a disappointment when the book was great on literary grounds. The comparison is within the field of films, not books. However, films adapted from books generally aren't very good, and I think you're on to why- scriptwriters try to excise everything that isn't a story, but try to call the script by the same name. It's absurd.

This, of course, doesn't stop hacks from writing books as if they were making a movie. Elmore Leonard, whom I'm only thinking of because I just saw a completely fawning interview with him where his self-congratulatory answers both irked me and piqued my interest, actually writes his novels in the traditional three act structure that scriptwriters use.

I've had several friends who were into prog rock, where concept albums based on written texts are extremely common. It requires endless self-control for me not to throttle them while they tell me about Magma and their albums based on a fictional alien race + language, as if stringing together some sounds and making up a backstory is somehow a replacement for situating a text in a culture, an author, and a reader.

[Edited on Feb 09, 2004 2:53PM]

Sorry to freak you out with the tooth story. Since this mornin'gs trauma, I've successfully eaten (twice!), drank (enough water to drown a really tiny horse, it seems), and brushed my teeth (for all the damned good it's apparantly done me all these years) without discomfort or further gumline mutiny. I've frequently had the tooth nightmares - I wonder how common they are?

I desperately want to not have to deal with this. It seems like the sort of situation to which there is no fun solution.

Most recently, the girl and I stomped around the local market looking for a lost bag of birth control pills. At midnight. This included going through every basket in the basket drop-bin and peering into the security guard's office to see if he'd found the bag and stashed it away. The local supermarket is both a Whole Foods-style health food store and a regular supermarket that exists on the periphery between a really poor neighborhood with lots of projects and a large Ivy League school, so it's common to see college kids buying tofu and wheatgrass stuck in line behind a woman buying powdered milk with welfare checks. Regardless, I am usually the crazy person, as the girl and I argue endlessly about obscure ingredients to various packaged foods.

But you no longer have long hair so quit living in the past and post a recent profile pic... haha!

Man... my bday is soooo this month yo!