I’ve placed an order for an e-book reader: the first-generation Amazon Kindle.  I’ve been interested in a good e-book reader for about 8 years, but what I previously thought was going to be the best, the Everybook, failed to bloom.  It was many times as expensive and heavy, and used LCD screens.

I sat down some years ago and put together a checklist of what I wanted in an e-book reader.  They were:

1. Lightweight
2. Electronic paper
3. Long battery live
4. Expandable storage
5. Ability to be annotated
6. Multiple format support
7. Price under $500
8. Fold-open design to see two facing pages
9. Viewable area at least as large as a paperback
10. Hackable!

Only the first seven are guaranteed.  This is only a one-page reader, however, rather than a two-page reader.  The viewing area is only 6 inches diagonally.  And I’m not sure whether it’s going to be hackable, but I’ll try my best.  But Amazon added a whole bunch of extra functionality: MP3 player, free wireless access to buy books or download content while seeing Amazon reviews, free browsing of Wikipedia, an email address for the device.  I think this all adds up to “good enough for now”.

Notice how everything is converging?  My ideal reader today would support full-motion video, color, advanced music playlist management, email, telephony, touch-sensitivity; it would be a replacement for a separate book reader, phone, mp3 player, PDA, calculator, and laptop.

My CD collection — at least those I’ve ripped — is viewable again.  Check out the program that generated it: Tellico.  High marks as collection-management software.  Link at the bottom of the CD Collection page.

OK, I will continue to take it.  But I am bored.

I left early from Hemet, where Jenn and Niall are, to medicate the cat.  I have tons I could be doing, but: the book I’m reading is written on ultra-low-contrast paper that will have to wait, probably, until I get new glasses or the sun supernovas; the TV needs to be smacked about every five minutes to do its job (no comments, please); my Windows XP notebook is dead; my video player is fucking stolen; and I’ve promised myself I won’t start any more projects until I clean up and organize all my existing ones.

So I’m doing the only rational thing: I’m sitting at my computer, poised in case anyone sends me an email.

OK, that’s not “the only rational thing” as much as it’s “an utterly irrational thing”, but hey.

Oh.  Maybe a new CSI tonight?  Maybe it’s recording on the good TV?  Worth checking.  See you later.

Well, I’ve thought myself pretty high-and-mighty for my public transport experiment.  Fantasies about selling my car and all that.  Bus to the light rail, light rail to Metrolink/Amtrak, Metrolink/Amtrak to the bus, then unwind the procedure on the way home.

What have I seen?  Sick people.  Lots and lots and lots of sick people, with active respiratory (and otherwise) infections.  Nurses still in their bodily-fluid-stained scrubs riding next to me.  A crazy lady with a metal bowl on her head who kept attaching and detaching a bandage and screaming at the conductor.  I’ve endured this, in addition to increasing my commute from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours.  I’ve rejoiced that I can now read, or work, or sleep on the way, and savored what it has done to increase my patience.

Today, I slept.  And some motherfucker stole my backpack.

My laptop is busted, so this is the first time I haven’t had it on me, which would increase the loss by about $1500.  Fortunately (fortunately?) my loss was only $920, in electronics and luggage and tools, including my trusty calculator that I actually considered a dear friend.

Let me let this sink in.  He stole my motherfucking backpack.  How empty did the train have to be for this to transpire?  Could I be dead now?  Could he have held me at knifepoint or gunpoint and asked for my wallet, phone, and keys as well?  Absolutely he could have.

Jenn tells me that my bag could just have easily been stolen out of the back of my car.  But my sample size is leading me to an opposite conclusion.  I’ve been driving to work for over a dozen years.  Nothing has ever been stolen.  I’ve been taking public transportation for a week.  And I cannot afford to replace $920 worth of stuff right now.

Yes, I’m privileged.  Yes, I’m wealthy.  Yes, I’m pretty spoiled.  I make a good living in a plush job in a nice office.  I drive a luxury car.  I have options.  I tried to take the train to reduce my environmental impact.  But is it worth it?  What do you think?

Good grief, is anyone else following this thread?  I realize the extended family of the murderer may be in a bad mood these days, but no one understands a thought experiment.  These are the same people who attend PETA marches to fight for the rights of Schrödinger’s cat.

Anyone waiting for my manic swing, as documented here, to end: it has.  Blah.  Vomiting, chills, and depression.

Wow, this is a nice item, but I didn’t think it was $76 worth of nice.  I bid about a third of that.  [archive]

moar funny pictures

In 1908, the amateur mathematician Paul Wolfskehl, who had always been fascinated by Fermat’s last theorem, bequeathed a prize of one hundred thousand marks to whoever could prove the theorem. This generous prize greatly increased public awareness of the problem, with the result that the University of Göttingen, which was to administer the prize, was deluged with attempts at proofs. Eventually, Edmund Landau, the head of the mathematics department, resorted to sending printed cards acknowledging submissions and stating on which page and line the first error occurred, as it unfailingly did.  — Thomson Gale (I don’t know if that entity is a person, business, or other organization.)

I’m triaging philosophical works, and I keep coming back to Landau’s solution.  So, Lewis, Clive Staples.  Miracles, A Preliminary Study.  New York: Macmillan 1947.  Your first error occurs on page 21.

I’ll follow this up in my quest to find a place for agency in a naturalistic worldview.

Challenge-response for posting (the “What is 6 + 6″ thing) should be working again.  It’s been down since the upgrade of versions.  Thanks to Sue D. for the notification.

I beat my Windows Mobile Solitaire for the first time today.  I scored 3696 points and solved the puzzle in 228 seconds.

In other news, my work XP notebook crashed today.  Hard.  It won’t boot in Safe Mode.  It won’t boot in Recovery Mode.  I’ll be playing Alt-F8 debugging games over the weekend so that I can be productive on Monday.

My question is, does Microsoft have a rebate or exchange scheme for these items?  Could I trade in my valuable Solitaire win for a machine that just, say, works?

That’s it, just “Rebate Scams” as the title, to try to draw search engine traffic.

It will be a self-selected sample, granted.

Anyone think many mail-in rebates are effectively scams that just refuse everyone the first time around?  “Lose the paperwork” or email you and tell you that you forgot to send in the UPC?  If this is going on, how widespread is it?  Anyone switch over to sending with Signature Confirmation on all rebates, or all rebates over $10, for instance?  Anyone put a little code in their address (a fake “unit number” for a house, for instance) to see how much the MIR is really costing you, in terms of unsolicited advertisements?

C.S. Lewis, 1947 (?), final stanza:

Hence, if belated drops yet fall
From heaven, on these her plastic power
Still works as once it worked on all
The glad rush of the golden shower

Add http://sgisland.gs/webcam/webcam.jpg to your desktop and watch it refresh throughout the day (every 3 minutes, approximately.)  It’s in the island of South Georgia.

Enter to win an autographed Los Angeles Galaxy jersey

OK, ladies and gents, here is the first split rating.  It’s probably a “4″ cinematically, and a “7″ in-genre.  It also deserves more than a moviemath rundown.

First off, I’m taking the “based on a true story” bit off the table.  Completely.  Short of the disgusting marketing of actual video of a killing spree as “horror”, and (on the other extreme) Blair Witch doing a meta-media-take on the documentary business, it just gets shuffled off.  I ignored it for Wolf Creek.  I credit it in The Wicker Man (the original, damn it) for being an innovative lie, but that’s the exception.  If I had to weigh it, “Based on true events” it would probably count against the movie.  But I’ll ignore it.

I haven’t seen Hostel.  By choice.  I don’t go for torture-porn.  Wolf Creek is about as close as I’ve gotten, and that was because I was going in blind and deaf.    This film might, in torture, be closer to Hostel.  I don’t know.  So I’d have to sum this up as Wolf Creek meets The Wicker Man.

OK, I invoked The Wicker Man.  That’s like invoking Citizen Kane or the Beatles.  But it’s not an empty comparison, and Borderland effectively ups the ante from its inspiration: it shows a four-way intersection of Catholic, Southern Baptist, and Santeria faiths, with extreme pathos due to all the practitioners being equally benighted, with a liberal atheist whose character arc is the most compelling to me.  I seriously related with Ed.  The movie shows what I’m willing to confess, that the most liberal among us is hours away from taking up arms against a sea of tyranny.

What’s good?  That depends.  Cinematically,

0 stars as a presumptive exploitation base, with
+1 star for effective use of over-exposure, 16 mm (?) filmstock, and Avid skipframing as poor man’s horror devices.  It assures me that not a ton of money was wasted on this film.  Then,
+2 stars for quite competent acting, by everyone except Rider Strong, and
+2 stars for Sean fucking Astin going against type, probably to the benefit of his career, and winning the screen, seemingly being the only one in the bunch, including the director, who groks that banal evil is scarier than overplayed horror, with
-1 stars for corny musical stings

OK, that’s cinematically.  In-genre, I’ll forgive half the musical stings bit, which starts us at
4.5 stars, with
+1 stars for the male Americans (again, excepting Rider Strong), the Mexican female lead, and the priest and priestess being scorchingly hot while the thugs were inhumanly ugly, adding on
+1 stars for it not falling into the new cliche of everyone having to die, and
+1 stars for a truly scary window and rooftop scene, with
-.5 stars for the closing panels that show what happened to the characters afterwards.

Emotionally?  Taxing.  Really fucking taxing.  Horror review for me is an academic exercise, and usually I’m immune to the tropes of the genre, but this took its toll.  It has tremendously increased the standards from last year’s festival, where nothing was close to as good.  This is a good movie.  And a sincerely scary movie.  And a rather exploitative movie.  I don’t really like being wound around a director’s finger, but that’s what this movie did to me.  It’s going to steal sleep hours from me, and I don’t forgive that easily.  But it was my fucking choice to go see this nonsense and try to review it, so I really have no one else to blame.

Recommendation: Make up your own mind.  If you’re not disturbed by this movie, what the hell is wrong with you?

2 points for a 2-bit teen remake of Rear Window, with
+1 for David Morse creeping me the hell out, and
+1 for Carrie-Anne Moss playing a normal human being convincingly, and
+1 for dear lord is Sarah Roemer chaud

Recommendation: Steal it

I’ve seen this film at least half a dozen times.

5 point base for good political action thriller, with
+1 for not having to watch Rebecca Pidgeon in the Tia Texada role, and
+3 for Mametese, and
+1 for rewatchability, and a big
+1 for seeing Ed O’Neill hold his own against Bill Macy and Val Kilmer, but with
-4 points for suffering through Mamet directing Mametese dialogue

Recommendation: Buy it

“Faith is stronger where weakness rules” — Liv Kristine Espenæs

Wow, Liv, that was worth the price of admission.  And the price of admission in the US is over forty dollars.

In context:

Life is a wonder
I’ve entered the gate
Time can be healing
If you just learn to wait

Pain makes tears flow
But it tells you to pray
And the night is our fortress
When we’re tired of the day

Opposite thoughts make me wonder sometimes
“Is there something out there”
I don’t know

But your smile makes me wonder,
“Did you mean what you said”
And a million thoughts went through my head

Your words make me cry…
And laugh, I guess
I am caught in an ocean of blue emptiness

Faith is stronger where weakness rules
Changes will open your eyes when it hurts
A coin has another side staring at you
And love causes freedom and prison in you

But the faith and the trust and your strength is my harbour
Faith, trust, and love I carry within me

I remember when I “upgraded” from a backpack to a messenger bag / briefcase type thing.  I felt so grown up.  “It’s in my briefcase,” I’d say with half-hidden glee.

Well, now I’m old.  And you know what?  Backpacks are better.  You can ride on your bike with them, they hold more, there are special ones designed for notebook PCs, and what the hell do I care what other people think?  So I’m switching back to a backpack.  So there.

4 stars for being a really good epic, with
+6 stars for special effects, with
-1 for the queen’s monologue, and
-1 for a disturbing rape scene, and
+.5, I guess, for her twisting the rapist’s words while she twists the sword, and
-1 for dead elephants, and
+1 for David Wenham, though
-.5 stars for criminally underutilizing him

Recommendation: Queue it

5 stars for better special effects than I expected, with
-1 stars for acting, and
-1 star for Jessica Alba’s acting, and
-1 star for Jessica Alba’s makeup, and
-1 because it deserves another knock, but with
+2 stars for being a comic book movie appropriate for kids

Recommendation: Ignore it

7 stars for what I guess people mean when they describe this film as having “visual poetry”, if that involves cherry blossoms, waves, and animals made of plants, with
-1 for my not grokking the story grammar, and
-1 for having a tough guy who talks like a wimp, and
-1 for not upsetting the genre enough to have him be a decent human being, and
-1 for the wife character, and
+.5 for the junkyard owner character and
+.5 for how the final suicide was cinematically handled

Recommendation: Ignore it

4 stars for being a serviceable thriller, with
+1 stars for Jim Carrey in a compelling role where he does not talk out of his ass, and
+1 for stars-playing-multiple-roles, and
+.5 for Rhona Mitra, with
-3 stars for Schumacher being a total douchebag, and
-1 for the wrong ending, redeemed with
+.5 for the almost-sufficient explanation in InfiniFilm of why they chose the wrong ending

So why not 3 stars?  You’ve got me.

Recommendation: Queue it

I said I’d start exploitation cinema at 0 stars, right?  So:

0 stars, with
+1 for Michael Biehn, and
+3 for gleefully exploiting the genre without exploiting the audience, and
+1 for Bruce Willis, and
+1 for the shocking anti-gun moment in an otherwise pro-gun movie, though
+1 extra for Rodriguez hiding this from his son, despite
-1 for the sickening use of meat throughout, except
+1 because I’m fairly confident it was meant ironically

Recommendation: Buy it

3 stars as a serviceable PG-13 horror movie, with
+2 stars for John Cusack carrying the whole damn thing, except for
-1 stars in the two places he drops the ball, with
+1 stars for the alternate endings, and
+1 stars because I was in a kind and generous mood

Recommendation: Steal it

God, where to start?  From zero, I guess, where exploitation cinema should always start.

+1 for Tarantino dialogue, and
+2 for Tarantino direction, and
+3 for casting Deluxe-process saturated red as a character who makes a high-impact cameo at the end of Act II, and
+1 for the bookending of “what it means to be a girl now” in contrapoint to “what it means to be a girl when tropes are upended”, with
+1 for Zoë Bell’s acting, and
+2 for her stunts, and
-1 for the telegraphing of the leg-out-the-window bit, with
+1 for Tarantino getting nuances out of Kurt Russell that I didn’t think possible, truncated to
9 stars because I refuse to give 10-star reviews in all but unreasonable circumstances.

Recommendation: Buy it

3 stars for being a ballsy and therefore uncomfortable documentary, with
+1 stars for the brilliant director of Boys Don’t Cry‘s commentary (who reminds me so completely of my sister-in-law that it is bizzare), and
+3 stars for the subtle statement that the sedate and appropriate life of the private investigators would unreasonably get an NC-17 from the MPAA, and
-1 stars for John Waters trying to convince viewers that his movies should not receive NC-17 ratings

Recommendation: Queue it

5 stars for being a relevant biopic with
+1 stars for it being a woman, and
+3 stars for it being Cate Blanchett, whom I adore, and
+.5 stars for turning the gender relationships in the genre on their head, with
-2.5 stars for Joel Schumacher trying to be gritty and instead just being an ass.

Recommendation: Queue it

OK, here’s what I think I’ll do about movie reviews.  I’ll inline them in my blog.  I’ll tag them all “moviemath” for reasons that should become readily apparent.  I’ll try to avoid blatant spoilers, and be annoyingly concise, but at the same time try half-assedly to troll for dumb comments by passers-by.  But that’s between you and me, you being the dedicated mcgees.org reader.  The people whom I troll will be the Googlers.  If there’s anything really spoilerish, I’ll put it in the background color, so you’ll have to hit CTRL-A to read it.  That will lower my Google rating, but hey, life’s short, and spoilers suck.  So prepare to be inundated as I go over the films I’ve watched recently, then watch it slow to a trickle as it slows to match my viewing rate.  So, onwards and upwards.